


Yuri Plisetsky, Foulmouthed Guardian Angel

by istillfearkanna



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Confessions, Cuddling & Snuggling, First Kiss, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, These boys need therapy ok, Victor is also bad with feelings but we knew that, Yurio is Bad at Feelings, so is Yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9891191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istillfearkanna/pseuds/istillfearkanna
Summary: Yuri comforts the object of his stubbornly concealed affections and gets more than he bargained for in the process.





	1. Freefall

"Ask Yakov anything you don't understand," Victor said, conflicted, even distraught, at the idea of leaving Yuuri. "If you're in trouble, just hug him, and he'll help you."

Lurking near the elevators, Yuri barely managed to hold back a snort at that one. Yakov hated Victor's random displays of affection, and Yuuri wasn't exactly the sort to throw himself at the grouchy old man. He hardly even did that with Victor.

Victor held Yuuri even tighter, whispering something. Yuri looked away, letting them have their moment (or maybe he just didn't want to look, whatever). He'd promised Victor he would see to Yuuri for the night, and he intended to follow through. 

Of course, he'd have done it without Victor's request. In fact being asked to do - especially by Victor - almost made him not want do it. At least if he'd done it of his own accord, only Yuuri would know...though perhaps he should be thanking Victor (ew) for giving him an excuse to say he was coerced.

Yuuri was heading back into the lobby now, and Yuri could see the cab speeding away through the window. He took a deep breath. Comfort wasn't his specialty, and that was putting it mildly. Truthfully, comfort was so far out of his area of expertise he would need a telescope to see it.

It was the moment of truth. A disheveled an miserable looking Yuuri was right in front of him. He made some effort to try and hide it, but when it came to misery Yuuri wore his heart on his sleeve. No, his sleeve would be too subtle. More like directly on his forehead.

"You don't have to do this, Yurio," Yuuri said quietly, wearing the saddest smile Yuri had ever seen. "I can take care of myself."

"Well I don't want to get an earful from Victor," Yuri lied. "And I want you in top form tomorrow, katsudon. It's no fun otherwise."

Yuuri smiled at that - not quite as sadly, but still miserable. "Really, there's no reason to feel obligated - "

The elevator doors opened. "Oh god, katsudon, just shut up and let me help," Yuri moaned, shoving Yuuri through them with a grimace. 

"Well, thanks," Yuuri said with a quiet laugh. It was a long, quiet elevator ride as Yuri stared at the miserable, bleary-eyed man before him. Last time they'd been in this elevator Yuri had given him no end of shit about the competition, still incredibly bitter about the Cup of China incident, where that completely shameless kiss had ruined a perfectly good meal.

The sight of it was still seared into Yuri's brain. He never had nightmares about it or anything, but when he did have them the kiss was playing in every tv in the background while he was running from a knife-wielding clown or something.

"Sorry about yesterday," Yuri mumbled, looking away from his rival as he recalled their last elevator ride together. "I didn't mean to be such an ass about the short program. I guess I was still bitter about our first competition."

"I must be really pathetic if you're apologizing," Yuuri said dryly, his sarcasm a welcome change from the moping. Yuri turned back to him and saw the older man smirking, confused yet entertained. 

"Maybe I would have apologized anyway, katsudon," Yuri huffed. "Don't make me regret helping you already."

Yuuri laughed again, and there was more warmth to it than last time. "You've already helped a little. You really don't - "

"I swear to god katsudon if you say that again I'm babysitting you for the rest of the competition!"

He meant it, too, and Yuuri seemed to pick up on that as he stood in stunned silence while the elevator doors opened. "Sorry, I'm just surprised you're so committed to a favor for Viktor."

"For Viktor my ass," Yuri snorted as he pulled Yuuri. "I was gonna take care of you no matter what."

Fuck. That was more than he meant to say.

"Take care of me?" Yuuri repeated the phrase slowly, like he was inspecting it for traps. 

"Yes, god, now let's drop it," Yuri sputtered, hoping to derail the train of thought before Yuuri caught on to the reason why he was being so considerate. "Which room, katsudon?"

Momentarily distracted from his analysis, Yuuri glanced around, eventually setting off in the correct direction with Yuri in tow. He hesitated at the door, holding his keycard just above the slot. "So are you just going to see me in or - "

Yuri grabbed his wrist and forced him to slot in the card, then used Yuuri's body to push the door open. They both stumbled in with grace entirely unbefitting two trained danseurs. "I'm staying until I think you're gonna be alright, katuson," Yuri declared as the door clicked shut behind them.

"I'm fine, I promise. You helped a lot," Yuuri said, smiling as he turned to look down at Yuri.

"I'll be the judge of that," Yuri muttered. Yuuri and Viktor were both staying in one room, but Yuri noted with some satisfaction that they had separate beds. The beds were just spacious enough for two if they held each other tightly, but...still.

Yuuri rolled his eyes and flopped onto the bed nearest the door. "I'm probably just going to sleep. I doubt you'd want to watch that."

Warmth crept up Yuri's cheeks and he was very glad his rival currently had his face buried in pillows, because it would be clear to anyone watching that Yuri very much wanted to watch him sleep. "N-no, of course not. I mean, if you're going to bed, I guess...I mean, can I use your bathroom?"

Yuuri chuckled into his bedding. "Be my guest. I have to change anyway."

Something else he wanted to watch. He sped into the bathroom before Yuuri could look up and see his glowing cheeks. Yuri leaned against the counter a long while, staring at himself in the mirror. "Don't be an idiot," he growled at his reflection. "Even if he did like you and even if he wasn't with Nikiforov, taking advantage of him would be a total dick move. You're better than that, Plisetsky."

He shook his head. What kind of loser talked to their reflection? JJ probably. Fuck that guy. Yuri decided to just wash his face, having no need to actually use the bathroom. With any luck cleaning up a little would clear his head.

It took a while, but it seemed to work. Yuri was ready to check up on Yuuri one last time and head out before he made an ass of himself in front of his stupid crush again. Once the faucet was off, however, Yuri thought he heard a choked sob from the other side of the door. He held his breath a moment, listening carefully. No further sounds came from outside, but his suspicions grew. Yuri turned the faucet back on, then waited a few seconds before throwing the door open.

Yuuri was curled up into a ball on the bed, head nearly between his knees, and he choked out a final sob before he realized the door was open and tried to choke them down again...though being seen apparently broke his resolve entirely as he started to weep openly.

Panicked and desperate, Yuri ran to turn off the faucet and stand near the bed, nervously shuffling his feet. "Yuuri what's going...what do I..." There was no response. Panicked, Yuri tried to think what he would want in Yuuri's place. The only times he'd ever received comfort were from his grandpa and his cat, and with his grandpa being a man of few words he'd usually offered comfort in a pat on the shoulder or, in extreme cases, a hug.

A moment later Yuri found himself crawling into the bed, prying open Yuuri's arms and slipping between them, his face buried in Yuuri's chest. He pulled Yuuri's arms back around him like he was tucking himself in.

"Yurio what...what are you doing," Yuuri stammered, unmoving.

"It's what my cat does when I cry," Yuri mumbled. He tried not to think about how ridiculous that sounded, but failed when he heard Yuuri's sobs turn to laughter. "Oh come on, I'm trying to help!"

Yuuri's arms hauled him back in as he tried to move away, mortified. God, it was everything he wanted, being here with Yuuri, in his arms, alone, warm and loved. His heart felt like it was spinning in place, out of control and giddy with excitement. "I'm sorry it's just...so appropriate, coming from you."

"Bullshit," Yuri growled, but he found his slender arms hooking themselves under Yuuri's sturdier ones as he pulled himself closer. "Are you really this broken up over being separated from Viktor for two days? You said I helped."

"You did," He conceded, sniffling as his face found the top of Yuri's head. Yuri grabbed fistfuls of Yuuri's shirt as he pulled in tighter still. "It's not because we're going to be a part. I mean, that's a little upsetting, sure, but...I'm worried about Makkachin. I'm worried what will happen to Viktor if he...and I'm worried about tomorrow, about practicing without him on top of my normal anxiety..."

"Gee, is that all? Sounds like a breeze to me," Yuri teased. 

He felt Yuuri smile into his hair for just a moment before he turned his face back to the pillow. "That's not even all of it...last year, when I bombed at Sochi, my own dog had just died. And I hadn't seen him in years. It's like it's happening all over again."

Yuuri was sobbing again, and Yuri could feel everything. He couldn't imagine getting a call like that right before a competition about his cat, and he especially couldn't imagine being separated from his beloved companion for so long. At that point Yuri had to fight back his own tears. "I'm sorry. Especially since I screamed at you after."

"I mean, I kind of understood," Yuuri said, getting control of himself again. "It fit your reputation. And it made even more sense after I got to know you."

Shit. Did the stupid katsudon actually have him figured out already? "What do you mean, it made more sense?" Yuri asked carefully, trying not to betray his secret.

"Just your drive and competitive nature, and your...unique way of expressing yourself, I guess?"

Yuri barely held in a sigh of relief. No reason to give it up now. "Yeah well I guess I didn't mean it or whatever."

"I know. And thank you for helping me tonight," Yuuri said quietly, his face finding Yuri's hair again, holding him tight. "I think I'll be good now."

Yuri didn't want to leave. He remained resolutely in Yuuri's arms and pretended not to notice his legs entangling themselves with Yuuri's. 

No taking advantage! It's just to comfort him. Obviously.

But then biology betrayed him. He was pressed up against the man he'd been pining for since last year, since he saw his skating first at the beginning of the GPF and started all those fanpages. He could feel every taught muscle and every breath. It only made sense for his body to react but...oh god, say something! Anything!

"I think I'm in love with you."

FUCK NOT THAT ANYTHING BUT THAT 

"Really, Yuri?"

He didn't sound angry. Curious, for sure. Maybe a little touched. "Maybe! I don't know. Fuck. Why does it matter?"

Instead of answering, Yuuri entangled his legs in Yuri's even more, and he took a deep breath in Yuri's hair before speaking. "I've had this recurring dream since you left Hasetsu."

"And?" Yuri growled, impatient, desperate to hear a real answer.

"It's at our big competition, and you're beginning to skate Agape," Yuuri continued in a soft, perahsp even affectionate whisper. He took a other shaky breath. "You start to slowly absorb the spotlight as you skate until your body is the only source of light in the room. At that point everyone else is gone. It's just you, the rink, and me standing just outside."

The fuck. "Wait, really?"

Yuuri ignored him and continued. "After that you start to struggle, to lose focus like you did at the actual competition. Instead of watching I skate out to join you, and when I do you sprout wings, and you look up at me, and you're just beautiful and literally angelic. I grow my own pair, dark ones to match my costume, and we finish the program together, with our hands firmly clasped. I want to kiss you, and you're looking at me like I'm the only thing in the world, but all I can think is that you're so beautiful and delicate that I'm afraid to touch you and then...I wake up. Every time."

Yuri's heart was going to explode. He moved away from Yuuri's chest to look up at his face, and Yuuri was looking past him, blushing furiously. He desperately wanted to tell Yuuri that was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, that he wanted to make it a reality, that he'd had his own dreams about the competition that were a lot more R-rates, but the most eloquent thing he could manage was a breathless "Holy shit."

"When I saw you walk up to me before your short program today...you looked just like you did at the end of my dream. I don't know if you saw my face, but...I almost collapsed on the ice," Yuuri mumbled, and then he was looking straight into Yuri's soul, eyes shining.

Now that he thought about it, Yuuri definitely had seemed taken aback. Yuri had assumed it was just his Naturally Intimidating Aura. "Holy shit," he whispered again, even more weakly. Him being speechless seemed to bolster Yuuri's confidence as his smile grew wider, warmer with each passing second.

"I care about you more than almost anyone else. I admire you and I think you're one of the most beautiful people on the entire planet. Inside and out. But especially out. I mean, have you seen your eyes?" Yuri couldn't help but groan at that, and Yuuri laughed, running a hand through soft blonde tresses. "And your hair, it's just so beautiful. You're also a surprisingly great cuddler. I guess you learned well from your cat."

"Ugh, stop," Yuri could barely get the words around the lump in his throat, could barely hear them over his heart pounding, the blood surging in his ears.

"Sorry," Yuuri said, not sorry in the slightest. "You just have this uniquely angelic beauty and acknowledging that for real just...I guess I was overwhelmed. I kinda figured you would murder me outright if I told you about my dream."

Yuri decided right away that he wasn't telling Yuuri about his own dreams anytime soon. Not in detail, anyway. "Well, I like your ass," Yuri admitted.

That answer got a laugh out of Yuuri, one so sudden it devolved into a snort. "Thanks for noticing."

"I also love your stupid sweet face, and how good you are to me no matter how shitty I am...and I admire you too. I have since your debut."

"...what?" 

"Your step sequences. It's like you were skating them right across my heart, every time. That's always been my biggest weakness, and I think it's because I want to be as good as you so badly that I actually can't focus," He was going to deep. Abort! Abort! "Also. Your ass. It's like, really, really fantastic."

"I can't believe you looked up to me like that," Yuuri breathed, amazed, confused. "I'm not all that special, not like you are. I was never a prodigy, just some idiot that got lucky."

"Jesus, katsudon. Do you ever listen to yourself?" Yuri sighed. "You have Russia's two top skaters fawning over your skills daily and you still can't believe in yourself?"

The last of the tension drained from Yuuri's face at that. "I can. It comes and goes. Hearing it from you...it helped a lot."

"Good," Yuri said, and he felt his chest swell with affection again. He couldn't believe his luck. As much as it sucked that Makkachin had to take the bullet for him (and he truly hoped the mutt was okay), this moment wouldn't have been possible with Viktor hovering around - a thought that reminded him that whatever Viktor and Yuuri had wasn't going to up and disappear. But that didn't matter just now, because "Tonight, Yuuri Katsuki. Tonight you're all mine."

Yuuri laughed, and it was warm and loving as he lazily ran his fingers over Yuri's back. "Are you gonna slap a sticker on me or something?" 

"Actually I was thinking a tattoo," Yuri said with a predatory grin that suggested he was only half-joking. "More permanent."

"So you're going to drag me into a tattoo parlor and have them draw 'property of Yuri Plisetsky' on my forehead?"

"First of all, it's obviously going to be a tramp stamp. Second, I hear you can do tattoos at home with some pens and a lighter..."

Yuuri shuddered. "You are absolutely terrible. Remind me why I'm putting up with you again?"

"Hell if I know. I'm still convinced you're secretly plotting to compromise my skating with all these feelings," Yuri teased, but then he felt another stream of affection threatening to burst from his mouth. "Yuuri, I...I want this. I want you. I know it's weird, but as much as I would love having you all to myself publicly like that, I don't want people fucking prying. Intimate shit like that, I want to keep it to myself, even as much as I want to mark my territory."

"Your fanclub will find out, I guarantee," Yuuri said with a quiet chuckle. "They'll smell it."

"They're like bloodhounds," Yuri shuddered. "I guess what I'm saying is, I want to keep my feelings private, but I also want everyone to know that they're gonna get my skates in their back if they fuck with you."

"I think everyone knows that already," Yuuri teased, laughing into Yuri's messy hair.

"Good."

"Thank you, Yuri. For being here, for making me smile, for telling me how you feel," Yuuri suddenly gushed. It sounded like he was fighting back tears again. "I always knew you cared but I never expected - "

"Okay, okay! No more feelings, please," Yuri mumbled. In truth, he liked hearing it, quite a lot, but it was too much all at once to receive the love he'd been pining for on top of all these other feelings. "So you're good now?"

"I'm...better. I won't be 'good' until I know Makkachin is safe and Viktor is happy, but...thank you, Yuri."

"Good," Yuri said again. It was then that the conversation caught up with him, and the realization of Yuuri's earlier statement hit him like an ice skate to the spine. "That dream of yours...you never got to the end right?"

"...Yes?" Yuuri answered, sounding wary.

Yuri leaned back and looked up into Yuuri's beautiful, loving eyes, set in his beautiful face, cheeks and ears so bright red they seemed to be casting shadows. "So fucking kiss me."

Yuuri's face shifted. He looked almost pained, like he desperately wanted to close the gap, and Yuri immediately recognized the telltale signs of his anxiety.

Just this once, Yuri was not willing to wait for it to subside. Not now. He dove for Yuuri's face, so hard and so fast that Yuuri had to roll over onto his back to avoid their faces crashing into each other. Yuri glided across him, straddling his hips without a second thought, without breaking their lips apart, and eventually they settled into the kiss, their tongues and lips moving in concert, exploring each other, releasing the pent up emotions of the day.

It was heaven. Being with Yuuri was divine, kissing him so sinful but so sweet. He never wanted it to end, but their stupid brains needed oxygen. Biology was killing him today.

Even so, that first kiss went on for ages, months of pent up frustration and affection pouring out Yuri like he'd been gutshot. He couldn't believe how badly he needed this, couldn't believe the softness of Yuuri's lips or the skill of his tongue. Yuri feared he was terrible at this, he'd never kissed before, at least not like this, but Yuuri lead their little dance beautifully, and eventually they settled into a rhythm, wordlessly expressing love, dedication, even arousal with every movement of their lips.

At last they broke apart, not out of necessity or desire but just because they needed a moment to process.

"Wow," Yuuri gasped.

"Damn right, wow," Yuri growled. Subconsciously he dug his claws into the soft flesh of Yuuri's shoulders. "God, I've needed that so badly."

Yuuri laughed at that. "Me too. That dream getting cut off so often was beyond frustrating.

"Was it as good as you hoped?" Yuri teased. 

He didn't expect Yuuri's face to soften like that, didn't expect a warm hand to cup his cheek, nor did he expect Yuuri's eyes to lock onto his with so much love he thought he could drown in it. "If I ever kissed an angel I doubt it would feel half as good as that."

If he'd sprouted wings at that exact moment, Yuri would not have been the least bit surprised. He wanted to die, to float away, and to live in that moment forever all at once. The few seconds it took for him to formulate a response felt like hours until, at long last, he choked out "Way to be fucking dramatic, katsudon," and then they laughed, kissed again, and fell asleep in each other's arms.


	2. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reality dawns on both Yuris as they deal with the possible consequences of their feelings in the harsh light of day.

Yuuri woke first the following morning, his face buried in soft and fragrant golden hair. One hand was lazily draped over Yuri's narrow waist, another wrapped beneath him and across his back, pulling the delicate little tiger in as close as possible. Yuri's steady, even breathing was warm and soft against his chest.

It was a beautiful sight, and a beautiful feeling. Yuuri smiled as he realized no one else had ever seen Yuri like this, and for the first time found himself glad for the Russian Punk persona that kept everyone else at an arm's length. It made what they had even more special.

Had someone told him, as Viktor left for the airport, that he would be so close to being at peace the next morning, he would have laughed until he cried. And then cried a lot more. Yet here he was, someone who adored him, someone he cared for wrapped up in his arms, soft breaths calming the nerves roiling just beneath the surface.

Which, in all honesty, is about as worry free as Yuuri can get.

The problem was that Yuuri knew he loved Viktor. It wasn't just the years of idolizing him, but the months they spent in Hasetsu, learning about each other and growing closer by the day, culminating in a spontaneous kiss at the Cup of China...which was far from the only kiss they shared that night. 

He didn't love Yuri. Not romantically, at least, not yet. They just hadn't spent enough time together, hadn't bonded to a point where they could feel the truth and depth of it. Yuri said he thought he was in love, sure, but if this was his first time acknowledging feelings for someone, of course he would think that. 

Still. Yuri had been open with his feelings, expressed his desires, made Yuuri feel wanted, which was more than he could say of Viktor. Viktor was so very physical, so close and affectionate, but he never spoke his mind. Even after nearly eight months together Yuuri couldn't tell when Viktor was truly happy or hiding behind his mask. Besides, an international playboy like him could have anyone he wanted. Yuuri was just something fun, a distraction, a shiny toy for Viktor to play with and abandon once he was bored. As if the living legend would ever fall for the dumpy, dime-a-dozen piglet.

Yuuri suddenly noticed he hadn't been breathing. His joints ached like he'd been holding them stiff for hours. Belatedly, he realized he had caught himself seconds before spiraling into a panic attack. He took several deep breaths and snatched his phone from the bedside table, hoping for a distraction. It worked: Makkachin had survived the night. The silly beast wasn't out of danger yet, but it was a good sign. 

Yuuri took a final long, deep breath and felt his erstwhile companion pull tighter against him, mumbling all the while. He couldn't help but smile as he set his phone aside, both relieved at the good news and overwhelmed with affection, wrapping his arms even more securely around Yuri.

Loving Yuri was not far-fetched. Not remotely. Yuri's heart had been laid so utterly bare the night before that even Yuuri's legendary anxiety couldn't convince him his love was an illusion, couldn't find some dark, twisted "truth" behind Yuri's words and actions. Something about seeing the normally prickly boy so vulnerable and honest had cut right through his doubt, and he wanted to hold onto that - an unexpected life preserver in the endless sea of uncertainty Yuuri called his psyche.

The age difference did bother him still. Yes, Yuri had been through a lot. Yes, he was more mature than people twice his age, even if his hormones still had a lot of sway over his behavior. But he numbers still loomed over him. Sex was out of the question, more so than usual, that is. Even a true relationship was a ways off. Yuuri needed to gauge what Yuri was capable of, what he could handle, if he really was mature enough to make a go of this. He had to fight his anxiety and desire and make an objective decision on this, for Yuri's sake as well as his own.

His fugue was finally broken as he felt a delicate nose nuzzling into his chest, golden hair tickling his chin. "Good morning, Yurio," he said, threading his fingers through Yuri's hair.

"Don't fuckin' call me that," Yuri mumbled into his chest. The words vibrated pleasantly against his skin.

"Make me," Yuuri teased.

He had just enough time to register Yuri was moving to do exactly that before there were a pair of warm lips against his own.

"You taste horrible," Yuri said as he dove back in for more.

"So stop kissing me," Yuuri quipped, wishing for nothing of the sort. One arm dropped to Yuri's slender waist and pulled him in tighter.

"Your morning breath is fuckin' disgusting," Yuri growled. He nonetheless shoved hard against Yuuri's chest with a sudden burst of strength, pushing Yuuri onto his back with Yuri straddling him. He dove back in for more, teeth and lips and tongue fighting desperately for dominance.

Yuuri smirked into the kiss as he marveled once again at the confidence his certainty of Yuri's feelings afforded him. "Like yours is any better?" 

Finally, Yuri pulled back for a moment. They pressed their foreheads together, gazing into each other's heavy-lidded eyes. Yuri's hair formed a protective curtain around them. "Angels don't get morning breath," Yuri said with a face that was somewhere between a smirk and a sneer.

Honestly, his breath wasn't bad at all. Yuuri would take that truth to his grave, though. "I won't live that down, will I?"

"Nope."

"Never calling you an angel again, then."

"Fuck you, I like it," Yuri grumbled, and his face flushed just the tiniest bit pink. 

Yuuri pressed a soft kiss to his lips and cupped his face with one hand. Yuri, overwhelmed, raised his own hand to cover it. "I'll save it for a special occasion, then."

The soft pink was nearing a full-blown red. "We...we need to get to practice," Yuri muttered lamely as he tore himself away. He stood and stretched languidly in the sunlight streaming through the windows.

God, he was adorable in the morning.

Yuuri sat up and had a stretch of his own (one far less blatantly sexy than Yuri's). "Did you sleep alright?"

"Better than I have since I left Moscow," Yuri said quietly. He turned around to see Yuuri sitting comfortably and the tiniest of smiles formed on his kiss-swollen lips. "Tell me, katsudon, how the fuck do you manage to go from neurotic mess to sexy and confident on a dime?"

"You mean when I skate eros?" Yuuri asked, cocking his head in curiosity. In truth the eros act was all part of the persona of the most beautiful woman in town, but he'd never really been able to summon her without the costume or off the ice.

"No, I mean with me, in bed," Yuri clarified as he headed for the ensuite. "You were just...teasing, flirting, giving as good as you got like it was something you do every day. I was expecting you to be all red and nervous."

"You were just...so earnest, so real when you talked about your feelings for me last night," Yuuri said with another gentle smile as he slipped out of bed. "And for once I believed that I was cared for. I guess that made it easy to set my insecurities aside for a minute."

There was a long silence just short of being uncomfortable. "All that just from a single confession, huh?"

Yuuri just laughed at that. "Not really. Ever since we met you've been expressing your love in your own...Yurio-ish way," he said, crossing the room to gaze at Yuri while he stood at the shower with a towel in hand. He looked so vulnerable, and Yuuri realized once again how strongly Yuri must feel for him to show this side of himself. "I realize that now. I guess I always have."

"Hey, katsudon," Yuri said after another pause, looking away as if he suddenly found the shower head very interesting. "We both have to shower, so, maybe, we can just shower together and save time, or something."

"Your workout clothes are in your room," Yuuri teased. 

"I know that, asshole," Yuri snapped. He crossed his arms over his bare chest as he looked away from Yuuri to stare a hole into the wall. "I can wear my shit from yesterday and go change after, alright? So get in with me."

The thought was sorely tempting, but with them sharing a bed on their first night, things were moving far too fast already. On top of that, Yuuri still had to get his head in order, which would have to wait until after the free skate out of necessity. "Not this time," he said, smiling, and he draped himself over Yuri tentatively. "We'd get distracted, and I don't want to get on Yakov's bad side on day one."

"Yakov only has bad sides," Yuri mumbled, face burning as he leaned back into Yuuri's hold.

It was strange, seeing the brash and stubborn teenager so easily flustered. Inasmuch as it was undoubtedly amusing (so much so that Yuuri finally understood why Chris and Viktor enjoyed teasing him so much), Yuuri was a bit flustered himself as the depths of Yuri's feelings dawned on him. This little experiment of his, if he decided that things couldn't work out, if Yuri was truly too young or if it all went wrong on its own, Yuri could be devastated - a realization that was almost enough to start Yuuri spiraling. 

No matter what, that couldn't happen, Yuuri decided as he pressed a kiss into a once again dressed Yuri's hair and sent him on his way. This had to be resolved quickly and decisively. He would never be the one to shatter Yuri's own glass heart.

* * *

Watching Yuuri practice without Victor was almost painful. In fact, it came close to being literally painful when Yuri started yelling at him, only to be saved from a collision with Mila by even louder yelling from Yakov.

Yuuri was nearly catatonic the whole time. He didn't miss any jumps, thank god, but he wasn't talking or smiling and he barely even acknowledged Yakov. Yuri's "pep talks" probably weren't helping, but he felt like he had to do somethin and yelling is all he knows. Also, kicking.

After practice, Yuuri slouched out of the locker room before Yuri could get a word in edgewise. Mila gave him an expectant look, like he was supposed to do something about it (he would, but he didn't want her to KNOW he would) so he told her to fuck off and stormed off in the opposite direction...and bolted the other way as soon as he was out of site.

It was easy enough to catch up to Yuuri, since he was going to the stands or to the other bathroom and both were in the same direction. Yuri fought the impulse to kick him to get his attention (later, he decided, this debt would he repaid with a flying kick) and instead opted to leap onto his back, forcing a piggyback ride.

"Thank god you're so tiny or you'd have just knocked us both out of the competition," Yuuri wheezed, forcing a small, but affectionate smile.

"The fuck are you moping about, katsudon?" Yuri demanded. He refused to engage in small talk. "You were fine this morning. I thought I helped. What gives?"

The smile faded from his eyes. "You did. It's just competition stress."

"Bullshit," Yuri mumbled. "I've seen that and you at least try during practice. Is it Victor?"

Or is it me, he wondered.

"Sort of," Yuuri said, quietly, as he lowered Yuri to the ground and sat against the wall in the deserted hallway. The ice was being set up for group one, so they had time to wait.

Yuri wanted to push. He wanted to so, so badly, but he knew, if it was him, he wouldn't want that. He wanted to wrap himself around Yuuri until he forgot all about it, but that would just seem like a pity hug and that would suck even more. He wanted to kick and scream Yuuri straight, but...well. 

Against all odds, Yuri Plisetski chose to sit down, say nothing, and gently lean against Yuuri's shoulder.

Yuuri's breath caught in his throat for a moment and Yuri braced himself for tears that, mercifully, never came. Instead, Yuuri very slightly leaned back into Yuri and they shared a peaceful silence that remained unbroken until group one was announced, at which point Yuuri turned to hold him and whisper a quiet "thank you" into his hair.

It was literally the best moment of Yuri's life.

Okay second best. The kiss was number one. And he was pretty sure it would be until his wedding day (when he married Yuuri, duh).

He loved this idiot. He loved him so much it felt like his ribcage was going to explode outwards with the sheer force of emotion. Yet it still nagged at him that Yuuri was still in love someone else, that he knew how important Yuuri was to Victor. The months after the banquet had been so painful, watching Victor drift more and more noticeably from his happy-go-lucky facade and into depression when Yuuri failed to contact him. Seeing him alive again in Hasetsu was almost worth the pain of losing the stupid competition. Yet...the thought of losing Yuuri after this, of reaching this impossible goal and then losing everything. It was soul-crushing.

Surely Yuuri wouldn't have done anything with him if Victor had said anything, if they were together, right? Infidelity seemed beyond Yuuri. But even if they weren't together Yuri knew they loved each other and...

Yuuri stood and took a deep breath, offering his hand to Yuri, who scoffed and stood on his own. Yuuri looked disappointed for the two seconds it took Yuri to grab his stupid piggy hand anyway. They walked into the stands together, not breaking apart until the last moment. Yuri didn't think he'd fixed whatever was wrong with him, not by a long shot, but he was confident that he had, at the very least, helped avert certain disaster. 

Until Yuuri went back home, anyway, and Victor found out what happened.

* * *

This was the first time Yuuri had seen Allegro Apassionato in person, and the only way he could describe it was "fucking terrifying." His eyes were so firmly rooted to Yuri's rapidly-moving, Lycra-clad form that he was honestly a bit dizzy by the middle...which was when he realized the lunatic had pushed his quads to the back half of his program.

Yuri did not have that kind of stamina. He was going to kill himself. Yuuri wanted to run onto the ice and disqualify them both to keep it from happening, but...he had to trust Yuri, for one thing. Besides, from the look on Yakov's face, they had at least spoken about this, though he looked just as concerned as Yuuri. 

With every quad, Yuri grew more and more pained. It was something only the judges and people familiar with him would notice, but it was so obvious to Yuuri he felt it himself. Every time he jumped Yuuri was internally screaming for him not to fall and break his damn willowy legs.

Somehow, his frail little body made all the jumps. Yuuri was concerned, but unsurprised to see him collapse to the ice, choking and gasping for air, though his fear faded into irritation as Yuri stood. Idiot. It was a stupid gamble. He was young now, but if he kept doing that he was going to end his career before he turned twenty.

Coincidentally, that was exactly what Yakov yelled at him when they arrived at the kiss and cry.

It was his turn on the ice and his coach was gone, his "coach" busy awaiting Yuri's score. He had to go out there alone, on his own power. He wasn't some kid, he didn't need a big pep talk, but...

Yuri's scores came in. It was all white noise as Yuuri stood on the ice, forgoing the usual skate-around in favor of just getting it over with. 

Yuri was in first now, he had to be on his technical score alone. JJ would win or get second. Yuuri just had to beat Mickey and he would be in for sure...even fourth would give him a chance.

He took a deep breath as the music started and left his fears - fear of missing the final, fear of disappointing Victor, of him returning to Russia, of him being upset about Yuri, of Yuri's heart being broken, the tiny, tiny chance that maybe Victor loved him and what that would mean for Yuri - as far behind him as he could.

It wasn't far enough.

Some day, Yuuri thought as he wandered outside after the medal ceremony, he might learn how to settle his tangled emotions before setting foot on the ice. It was always a mixed bag for him; sometimes skating would make everything better, and sometimes the added pressure would make his life a thousand times worse. 

Today it was...sort of both. He didn't self destruct under all the doubt and misery he'd managed to create by overthinking this whole situation with Yuri and Victor, but it was undeniable that every fall, step-out, and over-rotation was a result of those thoughts dragging him kicking and screaming from the neutral head space he needed to skate. Victor really had it right when he pointed out how Yuuri flubbed his jumps when he was thinking.

Speaking of Victor...

Thankfully he had squeezed into the finals, since his silver medal provided the tie breaker he needed to beat out Michele Crispino, so he didn't have to come home with his tail between his legs. What worried him is what to say about Yuri, and he knew he had to say something, because Victor was frustratingly perceptive and would pick up on any slight change in his demeanor.

It shouldn't be a problem, telling him. It's not like they were together or anything. Victor would likely balk at the age difference, but Yuuri felt his reasoning was sound enough and hoped that Victor could trust them. And it's not like Victor would be jealous, they weren't together or anything.

Right?

Yuuri hated his brain. Hated it so damn much. When Victor was flirting or touching or kissing him, all he could think was "oh this is just how he is, this is just fun for him, he could never love someone like me." Now that someone else was in the picture suddenly it was "oh but what if Victor really does love me, kissing me definitely felt like more than just fun, come to think of it have we seen him act like this with anyone else?" 

It was maddening. Was it too much to ask for his anxiety to be at least somewhat consistent? 

Suddenly there was a blow to his right side - not painful, despite the amount of force behind it - that send him tumbling onto his side.

"What was that bullshit with your free skate?! I thought we worked it all out!" 

Yuuri sat up and processed the tiny, angry blond before him. Of course it was Yuri. "We talked about this earlier, didn't we? Nothing ever really gets 'fixed' for me. It just...sucks, or it sucks less."

Yuri huffed at that and threw a paper bag into his lap. "Whatever. Can't believe I went through the effort of being all quiet with you only for you to barely squeak into the finals and get all...zombie-like on everyone."

"Your sacrifice knows no bounds," Yuuri remarked dully. The bag in his lap was warm and smelled vaguely of fresh bread. "What is this."

"It's good. Just eat it," Yuri muttered as he strenuously avoided eye contact.

Undoubtedly that meant this was some kind of thoughtful, even selfless gift, considering Yuri only ever made that face when he was being nice. Yuuri unrolled the bag and removed a still-warm piroshki from it. "Yurio, what - "

"Oh my GOD just EAT ALREADY." 

Yuuri obediently took a bite and found himself experiencing a familiar taste beneath the flaky pastry. "Oh my god, is this - "

And suddenly Yurio's awkward sullen vibe shattered as his face lit up brighter than the sun with a smile Yuuri never, ever thought he would see. "Yeah! My grandpa made them! Isn't it the best?"

"They're vkusno," Yuuri said softly as he smiled back. He wanted a picture of this moment in case Yuri never smiled like that again. It was so beautiful, so vibrant. But, one, Yuri would murder him, and two, he wanted to be able to make Yuri smile like that himself someday. "Really, thank you, Yuri. Last night, earlier, for this...you've done far more than Victor asked of you."

The smile faded and Yuuri felt a sudden pang of loss, followed by guilt and confusion as Yuri suddenly seemed troubled. "And then some," he muttered.

"What's wrong?"

Yuri cast him a sidelong glance before leaning against the snowy railing near where Yuuri still sat. "I mean, he left for like, two seconds and I went and put the moves his dream-boy/muse/student out from under him. Perhaps literally. Look, you don't have to humor me, if last night didn't mean anything..."

"...did it not mean anything to you?" Yuuri asked, and he hoped he didn't sound as weak and confused as he felt.

"Of course it did, you idiot," Yuri snapped. "The way I feel about you, it's...well you already know. But you weren't in a good place yesterday. I feel like I took advantage of that. And I feel like an ass for just blurting it out and putting myself between you."

Yuuri couldn't help but laugh at that, which got him a face-full of snow when Yuri kicked it at him in contempt. "This has been one hell of a day for you, huh?"

Yuri's face looked so hot it was a wonder the snow didn't melt all around him. "What are you talking about, katsudon?"

"You took care of me. You opened up to me, showed me your sensitive side, even dropped your angry face to comfort me the way I needed to be comforted," Yuuri said, standing at last and offering a grateful Yuri one of the piroshki. "Now you're actually more worried about me and Victor than about yourself. I'm starting to wonder if you were replaced by a pod person."

"Oh fuck off," Yuri growled around a mouthful of pork and egg.

"That sounds more like the Yurio I know and love."

Several seconds of choking and spluttering later, Yuri managed to stammer out a response. "S-so. Last night. What did it mean. To you."

"Everything I said it did. Moron," Yuuri added playfully.

Yuri scowled around another mouthful of piroshki. "Fine. But what about Victor?"

"He doesn't feel that way about me. It's fine."

Yuri looked stricken suddenly. "Oh, for fuck's sake. It figures."

"Are you okay?" Yuuri asked, placing a gloved hand over Yuri's. "What figures?"

"It figures that you only care about me because you don't know he loves you," Yuri spat. 

"Don't say that. I care about you no matter what," Yuuri said, surprising himself with how confident he sounded. "And anyway, if Victor felt that way about me, he could have said so any time in the last eight months."

Yuri scoffed at that. "No, because he's an emotionally stunted idiot who's never told anyone he loved them except his stupid dog. You don't know what it was like being around him after you 'inspired' him or whatever. It was disgusting."

Inspired him? He must mean after the video. "Eight months of living together is a really long time to not bring this up at all, Yuri. Besides, he's dramatic and affectionate with everyone."

"You are so fucking dense," Yuri snorted. "Sure, he flirts with Chris sometimes, but even that's just them being idiots together. No, he's...different with you. It's real."

Impossible, Yuuri decided. It just couldn't be. Even as he decided to discuss this with Victor later for sheer amusement, he responded with "Regardless, Yuri, I meant everything I said. No matter what."

Uncertainty lingered behind those vibrant green eyes for the first time ever. "No matter what?"

Yuuri reached around the little tiger's waist and pulled him in close. "Of course."

Yuri gazed up from his chest for a moment, and while there was still doubt behind his eyes he seemed willing to work past it - a feeling Yuuri knew all too well. "Can I stay with you again tonight?"

"Oh definitely," Yuuri said, and a mischievous grin slowly formed. "I didn't even medal. I'll need so much consoling tonight."

Yuri snorted at that, and it was so endearing hearing it from him, something so open and undignified. "You are the biggest loser."

"I guess I'm your loser," Yuuri teased, and he stole the blushing teenager's hand, pulling him back to the hotel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHO PUT ANGST IN MY FLUFF
> 
> i did it. it was me.
> 
> Sorry, I really wanted to let them just be sweet and fluffy and happy, but once I got to thinking about the potential consequences of their actions I HAD to elaborate. FYI i'm not sure how long this will be, 3 is an extremely tentative number because I tend to get carried away when I set limits, oops.
> 
> FYI I have swtiched from Viktor to Victor. Before I watched the show I assumed it would be Viktor because he's Russian and that's the traditional spelling or whatever and I refused to disabuse myself of that notion but it's gotten to a point lately where I'm like eh screw it, literally everything says Victor.
> 
> That being said I'm sticking to Yuuri because it is a huge pain to get that stupid stress mark over the u and it helps differentiate the two Yuris without having to force one of them to be Yurio.


	3. Fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri puts a theory to the test and a beleaguered Yuri is left to clean up the mess afterwards.

"Will you be my coach until I retire?"

"It's almost like a marriage proposal...I hope you never retire." 

The words rang in Yuuri's head for the entire trip home. He could still feel his knuckles burning where Victor had kissed them so very softly, affectionately. Victor had plenty to say about his free skate, and he was sure he'd have to ask about it later, but for now Victor's lectures, filtered by Yuuri's anxiety and guilt, came through as nothing more than cheerful buzzing.

It would be bad enough if all he had to worry about was Victor's apparent willingness to sacrifice his own career to remain Yuuri's coach forever. That was a bridge they'd have to cross later, because no matter how tempting it was, Yuuri's mind was made up. Victor's career was far more important than his. Victor would have entire novels written about him; Yuuri would just be a footnote. 

On top of all that he now had to reconcile this new information with what Yuri told him in Moscow. Victor's arm hadn't left his waist even after customs and baggage claim and a cab ride, with Yuuri only managing to escape by feigning sleep on the train. The impossibility of Victor "Living Legend" Nikiforov being infatuated with him was suddenly...well, a possibility. Yuuri would never call it a certainty.

It was always going to be awkward, telling Victor about Yuri, but now...

"...still can't believe you missed that triple axel, Yuuri, that's your best jump," Victor prattled on as they settled into Victor's room at the onsen. It was probably good advice, but Yuuri was still in his own head. "Yuuri, have you been listening to me? You've been so quiet."

Yuuri nearly leapt out of skin at the sound of his name. "What? Listening? Yes. Definitely. Triple Axels and...stuff."

Victor's laugh was rich and warm as always, but that just made him feel worse. "Yuuri, have you heard anything I've said this entire trip? Am I going to have to start recording my lectures and playing them back at you during breaks like Yakov used to?"

"Sorry, it's just jet lag," Yuuri lied through a weak smile. "I'll be at one hundred percent tomorrow, I just need to sleep like...all day."

"I can help with that," Victor said, and perhaps his smile was warmer, kinder, less mischievous than it would have been six months ago. Yuuri appreciated the change, the softer, less predatory Victor. Yet it worried him, given what Yuri said about him. "So, did Yurio take care of you like I asked? I can assure you Mila will happily toss him into a dumpster should I request it."

Yuuri prayed to every deity in existence that Victor missed his furious blushing. "Y-yeah. Actually, he was really helpful."

"Oh? I'm surprised to hear that. And not just because of his prickly exterior," Victor added with a wry chuckle. "It's just that you were so clearly off for your free program I thought you were distraught."

The distraction was, to some degree, Yuri's fault, but the emotional high of their time together had somewhat canceled that out. "That was...baseline Katsuki Yuuri distraughtness, really. I promise Yurio made it...less catastrophic."

"We'll have to bring him in before your performances more often, then," Victor said as he pulled Yuuri to his side, arm draped loosely around Yuuri's waist.

"Yurio said something interesting," Yuuri forced himself to say. He had to know how Victor felt and this was the only way he could ask without feeling like an idiot. "He said that you're...in love with me. Or something. I thought it was funny, I guess, that he misunderstood you. Us. Like that."

"Misunderstood?" Victor asked, the question delicate, dangerous, fragile, like a dagger of ice poised above his very heart.

Yuuri was understandably concerned, and he measured his response carefully, speaking to the marble bust Victor had near his bed to avoid seeing Victor's face. "Just...living legend Victor Nikiforov, world-renowned playboy and sex idol, in love with Katsuki Yuuri, some random pudgy sixth-place Japanese skater. It doesn't make sense."

"I don't see what our ISU standings have to do with our relationship," Victor said. "Even if they did matter, you're the top skater in your country, and I the top skater in mine. Seems like a perfectly qualified match to me."

"Japan has a much smaller field, though, and - "

"Yuuri, that's not the point," Victor said, suddenly stern, and Yuuri was unfortunate enough to catch the reflection of burning blue eyes in the window as they turned towards him. Blue flames burn hotter than red ones, Yuuri's mind supplied unhelpfully. "What, pray tell, did Yuri misunderstand about 'us?'"

The bust seemed to be staring back at him a little judgmentally, so Yuuri leveled his stare at the closet door instead. "We're not...you're not...you don't think of me that way, obviously. I'm just your student."

"So you think I would do the things I do with you for any student?" Victor's responses were measured, yet desperate. He seemed to want answers even as much as he dreaded them. 

"You just...you know. International playboy. You flirt a lot. It's just...fun for you." Was the couch shaking? Maybe it was a small earthquake.

"So, what, you just allowed me to take advantage of you, is that it?"

"Of course not...I wanted it," Yuuri said, and he lowered his voice to the quietest possible whisper to add, "I wanted you."

Victor laughed, but it was utterly devoid of warmth. His hand lingered impossibly at Yuuri's side and he could swear the once warm grip was growing ice cold. "Tell me, Yuuri. When have you ever seen me treat someone the way I treat you?"

"Well, in interviews - "

"Doesn't count. You know better than that. Tell me, what have you seen?"

"When you came to Hasetsu you were so forward with me - "

"Someone else, Yuuri, anyone else."

Yuuri lowered his gaze to the floor. He dragged up memories of every one of Victor's rumored lovers, of stories he'd heard from Chris, and...all of the times he talked about seeing someone it seemed so impersonal. Even in Chris' stories their meetings had been, well, "strictly business." 

No, it seemed no matter how deeply Yuuri dove into his encyclopedic knowledge of Victor Nikiforov, there were no memories to be found of Victor being so kind, warm, clingy, loving with a single human being.

"It's just you, isn't it, Yuuri?"

It was. It was, but it still barely made sense. If Victor loved him, why couldn't he just fucking say something? 

The several seconds it took Yuuri to realize he'd said that out loud were the longest of his life.

Suddenly Victor was grabbing him by the shoulders, forcing him into eye contact, a wild, desperate look in his shining eyes and oh god he was crying. "Yuuri, of course I...how can you not...why? Why does it have to be words?" He finally stammered. "I don't feel in words. I feel less with words. Why hasn't showing you been enough?"

"I guess you didn't learn anything from China after all," Yuuri said with a weak smile as he felt his eyes burning in kind. Of course he'd known, somewhere, somehow, on some level, but he could never let himself believe. It would hurt too much if he believed and he was wrong. And the odds of him being right were so, so remote. "The only person more stubborn than you is me, and my heart is more stubborn than both of us combined."

A fraction of warmth slid back into Victor's eyes at Yuuri's smile. "So you...you understand, then? That I...how I feel about you?"

With sudden strength, Yuuri leaned in and touched their foreheads together. He closed his eyes and draped his arms around Victor's neck. "Is it that you can't say it or that you won't?" Yuuri asked softly, and he felt Victor flinch. "I won't judge you, I just...I'd like to know."

"Sort of both," Victor answered, sounding pained. "I...want to, though. Or perhaps I just wish I could, for your sake. Even if I don't...or can't say it, I want you know that I feel it."

Yuuri's tears were as much frustration as they were affection at this point. The words had come so easily from Yuri, so casually, and he was not exactly in touch with his non-anger emotions. Or at least it had seemed that way. Yuuri needed to know, needed to hear it, even once, but...maybe this would have to be enough. Maybe he could get some kind of answer. "Fine. Then you don't have to say it. Just answer me, yes or no. Do you love me?"

Victor answered with a desperate, passionate kiss, and as much as Yuuri wanted to shove him away and ask for at least a damn nod or grunt of assent, he found himself happily melting into it. Still, his heart ached knowing he would have to tell Victor the rest of what Yuri said...and more importantly, what Yuuri said back.

* * *

"So you were right," Yuuri said flatly, and he looked defeated as he lay in bed staring at the phone in his dark bedroom. It was an odd thing to open a conversation with, especially since Yuri had been awaiting this conversation all day (and he was not giddy the entire time at all than you very much).

"Of course I was," Yuri scoffed. "Although it would help if you told me which of the many, many things I'm right about you're referring to."

Yuuri's room was frustratingly dark, and Yuri was really irritated that the idiot wouldn't turn a light on because half the point of this call was to see his goddamn face, but Yuri thought he saw a smile. "Many, many things? Are they mostly about cats?"

"And skating. And kicking your ass if you don't tell me what you're talking about."

"You've kicked me across the room on two separate occasions and hardly left a bruise," Yuuri teased, and the return of some emotion to his voice was calming. "I meant about Victor. His feelings. For me."

"Everyone knew that but you, Katsudon," Yuri grumbled as he rolled his eyes. "Well, what happened? He didn't actually say it, did he?"

"Definitely not. It was like pulling teeth," Yuuri muttered, and he rolled onto his side and towards the light so his face was ever so slightly more visible. "I mean. He was really upset when I told him I didn't think he loved me because he had't said anything. He almost cried."

"Seriously? He didn't even cry when his stupid dog ate chocolate. Just got that creepy faraway look in his eyes and made dumb jokes about it all day."

Yuuri shrugged in the dark. "It was rough. He just couldn't say it. And wouldn't say it. I eventually just asked him and he...sort of said yes, but even I can't deny that he loves me after the way he reacted."

"So," Yuri said, fighting to keep his face as irritable (yet somehow impassive) as ever despite his legitimate fears, "What are you gonna do about it?"

Silence. Yuuri shifted around in the dark, seeming to squirm beneath Yuri's gaze, until he finally spoke up. "I don't know?"

"That's a dumb shit answer, Katsuki," Yuri growled. "Hey, turn another fucking light on. I wanted to see...well it's easier to talk if I can see you so just turn it on, alright?!"

Yuuri laughed ever so quietly. "You can just say you want to see my face, Yuri, I'm not gonna judge you."

"I'll fucking judge me," Yuri mumbled. "Are you turning on a light or not?"

Yuuri sighed heavily and crossed the room to his desk, where his single lamp was providing the only light in the room. He slid into the chair and his face appeared at last - swollen and tear-streaked but still beautiful. "Ta-da," he sighed.

"Jesus, Katsuki," Yuri groaned. "So it went that bad, huh?"

"These are more tears of frustration than anything," Yuuri said, though his smile betrayed some sadness as well. "Why can't he say it? He couldn't explain."

Yuri shrugged. "You'd have to ask Yakov. He's always been closed off. The only time you ever see his emotions is when he's being stupid and happy."

"Not today," Yuuri muttered darkly. "I saw him angry, depressed, and frustrated basically all at the same time when he thought he didn't love me."

"I told you. You're...different," Yuri said, and any trace of irritation was gone. "You do something to...him."

"Just him?" Yuuri asked, and his miserable face bore a hint of mischief. Yuri loved this side of him and was terrified that he might lose it now that Yuuri knew how Victor felt.

"Fuck you," Yuri snapped, and the look of triumph on Yuuri's face meant he knew damn well what he did to Yuri. "You still didn't tell me what you're gonna do about it."

Yuuri dropped his head to the desk and groaned. "Because I don't know!"

This wasn't the time for half measures. Yuri intended to put his bluntness to good use. "You love him, don't you?"

Yuuri looked up at the camera, every inch of his face apprehensive as if he suspected the question were some kind of trap and said nothing.

"You can tell me, katsudon," Yuri said. He tried his best to look approachable with moderate success.

"Since when are you so...nice?" Yuuri asked, still ever so cautious.

"Because you fuck me right the fuck up, Katsuki, so just tell me already!"

"That's more like it," Yuuri said with a short-lived smile. More silence followed.

"Sure is funny you're gonna bitch about Victor not being able say he loves you and you can't even say you love him..." Yuri mumbled, too filled with apprehension to be properly angry.

"Promise me something first," Yuuri said to the space directly to the right of his phone camera. 

"Oh my GOD I'll promise anything to get this agonizing conversation moving."

"Promise that whatever I say things won't change between us."

"That's a stupid promise," Yuri said to the space directly to the left of his own camera. "I knew what I was getting into, alright? Nothing's gonna change the way I feel about you."

Yuuri looked like he was going to cry again. "I think that actually made it harder. Think you could hate me instead?"

"I fucking do now," Yuri groaned. "Come on, this is killing me!"

"I do love him," Yuuri said, ever so quietly, but it echoed through Yuri's ears as though it had been screamed across the cosmos.

"Duh," Yuri forced himself to say. 

"I'm sorry?" Yuuri said, and he looked ever closer to tears.

"Don't start," Yuri warned. "The night before you left Moscow you said you meant what you told me no matter what and I'm gonna hold you to that, okay? You give me plenty of goddamn reasons to be mad at you, but this isn't one of them."

"Sometimes I feel like you're more mature than us by far," Yuuri said with the saddest of smiles.

"Again: duh."

"Way to ruin it," Yuuri scoffed. "I don't know what to do, Yura...I don't want things to change between us but how can I keep that when I love someone else? Nearly my whole life I've been looking at him and now he seems more in love with me than I ever was with him. But now you have feelings for me and I've started to fall for you but you're so young - "

"Oh god don't start with that..."

" - but he's also my coach and isn't that kind of a conflict of interest or something? Not to mention how much of a hard time he seems to have with feelings. Just in general. And you're so...you're so good, Yura, you're unbelievable but - "

"One problem at a time, katsudon!"

" - I just don't know, oh god, I haven't even told him about us yet. He's barely even gotten over me not believing in us! I don't want to lose him as a coach, or a friend, or whatever we are and I can't lose you either but everything I do just seems to make everything worse and what are you even doing liking me when I just ruin everything I touch including my own career - "

"Yuuri, breathe!" Yuri shouted through the rambling. "Just...stop. Stop. You don't ruin anything. You need to get it through your thick fucking skull just how much of a difference you make. Before I figured out my feelings it was so confusing and I was just pissed, all the time, and once I did I was pissed because you would never want me but now...I don't know, fuck, I feel right. You'd better treasure this fucking moment, too, because I'm not saying it again anytime soon, but the reason I can be so cool and helpful about this is one-hundred-percent because of you. I feel right around you."

Yuuri's breathing slowly began to even out as he listened. By the time Yuri was finished speaking, his face so hot he feared it might melt, Yuuri was almost normal again. Almost being the operative word, because the look on his suddenly calm face was weirdly longing. "You're very good at keeping calm when I freak out."

"Yeah, and it's weird," Yuri agreed. "See what I mean? You do this shit to me. Victor's less shitty because of you, too."

"I don't get it at all," Yuuri said dully. 

"Hey, neither do I. But I love you, so shut up."

Well shit, now Yuuri was about to cry again. "I'm so...I love him but the way I feel about you, about us, it's just as important to me...but at the same time he's just so unavailable and stubborn, but you're only fifteen and I don't know what that would even mean for us..."

"Don't start with that again, katsudon, we already established I'm the mature one here. Somehow."

"I know," Yuuri said, but he seemed oddly defeated. "That doesn't mean I feel any less troubled about being physically intimate with you. Or that people will ever let us just be happy together. As much as we want to say it's just a number or something the fact is that everyone else puts a lot of stock in those numbers."

"I don't care what they think. And I don't care about fucking, either."

Yuuri smiled a little at that. "I...I do want to, on some level. We'll definitely talk about it in the future if you want. As far as everyone else, well, you realize we might be sanctioned or removed from the ISU if they decided our relationship was inappropriate?"

For a moment, Yuri thought that he would happily give up his career for Yuuri, but he also knew what kind of toll that would take on both of them so he managed to hold his stupid tongue for once. "So being with Victor fucks with your head and being with me fucks with your morals or whatever," he summarized instead.

"Don't put it like that," Yuuri said sadly.

"Katsudon," Yuri forced himself to say, "I think maybe you're better off not loving either of us."

"But I want to."

"Yeah, well, I want to learn the quad axel but I like having ankles that still work," Yuri snapped. "Look, I'll go back to how things were before, and you tell Victor to calm the fuck down, and you can sort all of it out, okay?"

"I don't want to. I want to hold you again at the finals, Yura..."

"I don't want you worrying about me to fuck you up at the finals, idiot," Yuri growled. "Can't you just sit on this until afterwards?"

"It's not really up to me," Yuuri sighed. "Maybe if I'm lucky my stupid chemically imbalanced brain will agree with you?"

"Fine, well, I'll make it easier and preemptively dump your ass until after the finals," Yuri said with forced sincerity. Yuuri looked like he was about to protest again, so Yuri pressed a finger against his own lips with a dangerous glare. "Look, I'm not gonna be the reason you fuck yourself up, okay? And Victor wouldn't want that either. He's a selfish piece of shit but for you he might just do the right thing and leave you be if he could see how fucked up you are over this. So take your time. Practice. Skate your stupid idiot figures. And we can talk in Barcelona."

Yuuri smiled at him beneath shining eyes and wordlessly pressed a kiss to his camera.

"Yeah, okay, whatever, fuck you, goodnight," Yuri groaned, and he pressed the end call button. His reserve faltered in that moment and the phone clattered to the floor as Yuri went utterly numb. He fell to the bed, tears suddenly streaming from his eyes unbidden. He rolled over on his side, shaking, and didn't stop until his cat slid up into his arms the way she always did.

He loved Yuuri. This was the right choice. If Yuuri loved him then he would come back when he figured it all out...and if not then at least he had those two nights in Moscow.

* * *

Yuuri wasn't sure how it was possible, but he felt both far, far better and far, far worse. He was grateful for Yuri's sound advice and willingness to step aside, but...well, now he was almost certainly falling properly in love with Yuri, and that made everything much more difficult.

Tomorrow, he decided, as emotional exhaustion and jet lag conspired against him. Tomorrow, he would have to tell Victor about everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *gets into yuuri's headspace*
> 
> *vomits emotions all over the page*
> 
> *repeat for yuri with more swearing*
> 
> -my writing process, basically


	4. Progress

Yuri's first night in Barcelona was nothing short of hellish. First he had to deal with his Angels for nearly an hour, which was more exhausting than anything, but then there was that asshole JJ and his bitch fiancée and his bitchier fans, who of course started shit with his Angels and then he had to defend them and then of course they went crazy for him being their "beautiful white knight" and...

Well. It was a trying evening, to be sure. And then he got a text from Yuuri, with whom he had been in a détente of forced casualness for weeks. It sucked, but it made his wild masturbatory fantasies about Yuuri all the more vigorous and passionate, so...at least there was kind of an upside?

The text was so simple - just a room number and a sad emoji - but that just meant Yuri's imagination could run wild with its possible meanings. Did he perhaps tell Victor what was going on and the old man had heartlessly abandoned him? Did he want to dump Yuri properly and had to break the news in person? Did he so desperately crave Yuri's touch after two weeks apart that he was willing to throw away his reservations about Yuri's age and his feelings for Victor to throw Yuri down on the cheap hotel bed, desperately stripping off his clothes, aching, even sobbing with want until-

Yuri shook his head vigorously. That particular fantasy was for later, and he wasn't about to knock on Yuuri's door with an obvious erection. Unless, of course, Yuuri wanted him to, though Yuri knew it would be a while. He understood Yuuri's age concerns, however begrudgingly, and aside from that he'd always wondered if Yuuri was a little bit on the asexual side anyway (he'd have pegged Yuuri as one-hundred-percent ace before he saw eros) so Yuri resolved to keep his intensely sexual desires on lock.

His hands were plenty skilled at satisfying himself anyway, since his laser-like focus on figure skating didn't really leave him much time (or desire) to go around picking people up for that sort of thing...though the idea of losing his virginity to Yuuri Goddamn Katsuki was intoxicating in its own way.

STOP THINKING ABOUT SEX ALREADY

Yuri knocked on the door with his goddamned skull hoping it would shake the filthy, filthy thoughts out of his head. It sort of worked, but Yuuri opened the door in mid-headbutt, which sent Yuri tumbling into his would-be boyfriends' arms. They locked tight around him as he took a deep, deep breath in Yuuri's warm chest.

Yuuri just chuckled at that. "I missed you too, Yura," he said softly, and Yuri felt the taller boy's face burrow into his hair. 

"Where's the old man?" Yuri mumbled, trying and failing to summon the willpower to leave the lovely warm spot he'd found, and suddenly his arms traitor arms were wrapping around Yuuri's waist. "And, uh. Are we gonna talk about stuff or...?"

"Victor? No, apparently he's at the pool with Chris," Yuuri said, and he sounded glum. Only those two would be stupid enough to go to the pool in December. "And I just wanted you to come because I missed you."

"Loser," Yuri muttered. 

Yuuri snorted in disbelief at that, leaving Yuri unbelievably offended. "Yeah, who's the one who literally threw himself into my arms?"

"Since when did you get so fucking snarky, katsudon?" Yuri growled, finally finding the strength to push himself away in an attempt to salvage the last of his pride.

"It is entirely your fault," Yuuri shot back, and he gently took Yuri's hand to lead him back to the room.

"I'm supposed to be leaving you alone to think about shit, though, right?" Yuri asked as his traitorous fingers, having quietly conspired with his arms, interlocked with Yuuri's.

Yuuri hesitated for a moment as they neared the two beds, which were suspiciously close together. "I just...I guess I want to focus on things that make me happy right now. Before a competition I mean."

"Oh," was all Yuri managed to say to that as his otherwise finely-tuned bullshit detector was permanently thrown off-course with the revelation that being together made Yuuri happy holy shit.

Seemingly somewhat aware of the emotional turmoil he'd just caused, Yuuri smiled and tugged Yuri down to the bed. "The happiest I've been before a competition was with you, after all."

Yuri managed to reign in his rebellious body long enough to scramble away from Yuuri and curl up against the headboard. The temptation to stretch out, rest his head in Yuuri's lap, rest his hand against a gloriously thick thigh (god Yuuri had such beautiful legs) and forget all about Yuuri and Victor's complete and utter inability to communicate was intense. "Seriously. What about all that thinking you had to do?" 

Yuuri curled up in an equally defensive position nearby, having been denied proper cuddles. Yuri leaned against his shoulder as a concession, which seemed to motivate Yuuri to speak up. "Yeah I'm...still working on that."

"You've had two weeks," Yuri groaned. "How have you made zero progress?"

"I don't know," Yuuri mumbled, and now he was curled far enough into himself to he speaking directly to his knees "The next day after we talked he was back to normal like nothing ever happened. Maybe a little more affectionate than usual? But he kept making up excuses to not talk about anything other than skating."

"Typical," Yuri sighed. "So he hasn't told you how he feels yet? With words?"

"No..."

"Ugh. But you at least understand that he...that he loves you, right?" He hated saying it, acknowledging the threat Victor posed to them being together, but he hated Yuuri being miserable even more.

"Well..."

Yuri elbowed his stubborn crush at that. "Seriously?"

"I mean...I believe that he definitely has some kind of feelings for me. And I don't think him being in love with me is completely impossible."

"Oh my GOD - "

"I don't know. If he loved me why would he avoid talking to me about something that was clearly important to me? Not to mention that he can't even explain how he feels about me when he should know how much I doubt even the simplest things..."

"It's because he's fucking terrified, probably," Yuri said with a shrug. "I was. I confessed to you completely by accident at first. As far as you doubting everything, have you actually explained that it goes beyond competitions?"

"No..."

"So how can you expect him to realize that it's bothering you, stupid?"

"I mean...after China, he should know, right?" 

"That's stupid and you're stupid," Yuri groaned, moving as far from Yuuri as possible in protest. Regardless, he didn't offer any resistance beyond a quiet huff when Yuuri stretched out his legs, forcing contact, with a soft chuckle. "Just because he loves you doesn't mean he's going to know everything about you. How the fuck am I more sensible than you assholes?"

"I know," he whispered. "I know we're stupid. Yet you still love me and I still love him."

"What did he say when you told him about Moscow?" Yuri asked, suddenly curious.

"...what about it?" Yuuri asked, suddenly cagey.

"Oh, god," Yuri groaned, and he flailed his tiny but powerful legs in Yuuri's direction until the older skater retreated back into his huddle. "You didn't tell him about us at all, did you?"

"...nooooo?" Yuuri said, looking guilty as shit.

"Katsudon," Yuri growled, and he was across the bed in half a heartbeat, pinning Yuuri against the headboard by his shoulders, their noses barely half an inch apart. If he didn't know better Yuri could swear there was a flash of lust in those beautiful shining eyes. "How the hell am I supposed to believe you're taking any of this seriously unless he knows the full truth?!"

"I promise, I wanted to!" Yuuri whined, and Yuri had to admit it sounded sincere even though he fully acknowledged what a sucker he could be for Yuuri. "He just refused to talk about anything but skating, like I said..."

"You've gotta get this sorted out before you drive each other insane or I kill you both," Yuri growled. Yuuri just gazed up at him in response, amusement starting to fade into genuine concern. "Tell me, katsudon. Have you told anyone about us?"

"No...but I don't really talk about relationship stuff anyway, so..."

"Not even with that super-peppy Thai skater? Pitch-it or whatever?"

Yuuri couldn't hold back a short bark of laughter. "It's Phichit, but please pronounce it that way in front of him at every possible opportunity, I promise he loves it," Yuuri said, an obvious lie, but Yuri resolved to do so anyway if it got another, equally adorable laugh...no matter how upset with Yuuri he was now. "I only shared things like that with him when he forced them out of me through increasingly specific interrogation, so no, not him either."

"So then, mister 'he should know how I feel if he loves me,'" Yuri muttered, barely able to keep a kicking and screaming Russian Punk beneath the surface, "Did you expect me to be upset about being stuck as your dirty little secret while Victor gets to parade you around all he wants?"

"I'm sorry," Yuuri said, and he managed to reach up to Yuri's face and stroke it despite his shoulder being pinned. "You're right. You deserve better. He deserves better than me withholding things from him, too, but...especially you, after you were so good to me. Both in Moscow and when I was back home. If I didn't know any better I'd think you wanted me to ride off into the sunset with Victor."

I just want you to be happy, Yuri thought. "I just want you to quit bitching," Yuri said. "Him, too. I guess."

"Even so, Yuri, I don't think you could exactly get away with parading me around," Yuuri confessed, though for once he didn't avoid eye contact. "It's not as though I wouldn't want you to but...y'know."

"The age thing," Yuri grumbled. "Yeah, yeah. I just meant that your friends and stuff could know. Maybe my grandpa. People who won't rat us out. Who'd maybe be happy for us."

Yuuri tore an arm free, threw it around Yuri's waist, and pulled him into a warm hug. "Of course. We could do that. If you still want to after everything gets worked out."

"Fine, whatever," Yuri sighed, fighting the urge to melt into Yuuri's chest and never leave. "The sooner, the better, then, right?"

"Okay," Yuuri confirmed, and he gave a nod a grim determination. "I think, with you here for support, I can sort all of this out before the final."

"Tomorrow?" Yuri challenged as he moved back onto his heels, ignoring the sadness in Yuuri's eyes. No matter how much it sucked he needed to keep romantic contact with Yuuri to a minimum. "That's a dangerous plan, Katsuki."

Yuuri smiled at that. "Yeah, well, you're not gonna let me get away with putting it off while you're here, are you?"

"Damn right," Yuri said, and as they stretched out on the beds to talk about less serious things (at a close but not quite intimate distance, at Yuri's insistence), it was easy to forget that he could lose all of this tomorrow.

* * *

Despite two decades of life in Russia, the coldest night of Victor Nikiforov's life was spent in a swimming pool on a Barcelona rooftop. The only warmth came from the laughter and support of his rather salacious and always entertaining friend Christophe Giacometti.

"So have things with Yuuri improved at all since that night?" Chris mewled, draping an arm around Victor's waist from where they sat at the shallow end of the pool. 

"What night?" Victor asked absently, mind purposefully empty as he intended to enjoy this calm before the storm that was the Final.

"The one where you called me at like four in the morning and cried until half-past six because Yuuri didn't believe that you loved him?" Chris said, oh-so-casually referring to the second worst night of Victor's entire life as if it was just another Tuesday.

"Oh," Victor muttered darkly. "I suppose so."

Chris chuckled at that and pulled him closer. "Mon amie, you couldn't possibly be happy with 'I suppose so' considering how utterly devastated you were."

"You are, sadly, correct," Victor sighed. "Everything was going so beautifully - "

"Except when you made him cry."

" - and then he drops this on me out of nowhere. How could he not see how crazy I am about him Chris? Everyone else knows it. Even little Yurio."

"Maybe we all knew because you spent an entire month telling us how crazy you are about him and then another two months. sinking deeper into quiet depression, but you never once told Yuuri to his face?"

"Of course I did!" Victor huffed, affronted, hand over his heart like a dandy. "I mean, we were drunk, but I definitely told him how amazing he was at the banquet."

"And yet he was so utterly perplexed when you showed up and started making moves on him."

"True," Victor admitted. That had been the first worst night of his life.

It was Chris' turn for a heavy sigh. "I love you, Victor, but you are so very dense."

Victor practically leapt out of Chris' gentle grasp. "How so!"

"You didn't call him for three months, Victor," Chris chided. "How can you blame him for doubting you when you never addressed that?"

"I was...busy," Victor said weakly.

"You were scared," Chris countered, and for a moment his playful demeanor was gone. "You were scared, and you insisted, over and over, that he had to make the first move until you threw yourself headfirst into depression."

Victor had been depressed long before then, but he wasn't going to open up about that to Chris or anyone else...maybe Yuuri, one day. He instead opted to be a salty bitch. "Who knew sucking every cock in the ISU would make you so wise."

"Turns out semen is really good for your neurons," Chris said, utterly uninterested in the halfhearted barb. "Victor, I love you. I mean that. But you need to listen to me when I tell you that you're going to have to be very clear with Yuuri. I've known him much longer than you and I know he'll talk himself out of just about anything, given half a chance. You need to look him in the eyes and say 'I love you and I want to be with you for as long as you will have me.'"

Victor reluctantly leaned onto his friends' shoulder. "I don't know if I can say that I love him," he confessed.

"Why not?"

"I've just never said it to anyone. Not in that way. Besides, what if he didn't say it back? What id it ruined everything? I can't just put myself out there like that and...oh."

"Mhm," Chris purred triumphantly. "So you're just being typical selfish Victor, aren't you?"

"Oh god, I am," Victor moaned.

"Well. While you're working in that, maybe you can at least tell him that you want to stay with him forever."

"That much, I think I can manage," and Victor had never been so grateful for Chris in his life in that moment, because Chris understood how hard it was to move past the selfishness born of his two decades of isolation. "Tell me, though, what made you such an expert?"

"I am literally the only human being you know in a healthy and stable relationship," Chris said with a smirk.

"...oh my god," Victor moaned. "No wonder I can't do anything right."

Chris offered a soft pat on the shoulder. "It's my duty, then, to tell you that you've already royally fucked up by abandoning Yuuri the night before your first practice for the final to get in the pool with your friend, a Known Tart."

"Fuck," Victor mumbled, and he leapt from the pool to grab his robe, almost forgetting he was naked until the cold hit him right in the groin. Chris laughed for almost the entire walk back to the hotel room.

They opened the door surprised to find the preposterously adorable sight of Yuuri clinging to Yurio like the latter was a particularly adorable stuffed animal, with Yurio looking as content as a kitten full of cream. It took all of Victor's admittedly limited restraint to keep from squealing at the sight.

"I want to post this to Instagram more than I've ever wanted to post anything, ever, in my life," Victor whined in a perfect stage whisper.

"Yuri would end you. You know this."

Victor, undeterred, raised his phone. "I'm at least making it my wallpaper."

Victor was so grateful to have Yurio in his life. Twice now the strange little tiger had surprised him by comforting Yuuri whenever he failed in his duties as Yuuri's lover and coach. It warmed his heart in an entirely new way to see the two of them so close, so intimate, so innocent and pure.

It was beautiful, really, how Yuuri's presence in his life had made him able to appreciate Chris and Yurio - two people that had, truly, already been important to him even as he walled himself off as much as possible.

"I want to join in but I don't want to wake them," Victor moaned.

"Again, Yuri would end you."

Victor sighed. "Okay, I'll suffer on my own lonely bed."

"And you'll talk to Yuuri first thing tomorrow, yes?" Chris asked from the other end of an accusing finger.

"Of course. And...thank you, Chris. For everything."

"It was my pleasure," Chris said with a wink. "You better make sure you talk to Yuuri fast tomorrow before he leaves you for some jailbait."

"Chris!" Victor gasped, legitimately scandalized. "That's awful. I take back all the nice things I said. Get out!"

Chris pretended to pout as he slipped quietly through the door. Honestly, though what a ridiculous idea, Yuuri leaving him for Yurio.

* * *

Yuuri didn't know if he would ever get used to waking up with Yuri clinging to him like a koala with vertigo. This morning he looked down to see the top of Yuri's head, hair softly glowing in the sunlight, face so determinedly buried into Yuuri's collarbone that it wasn't remotely visible, and died a little on the inside (in a good way). Yuri's arms were draped loosely around his neck and shoulders, legs determinedly tangled with his own to the point where he may need the jaws of life to escape the bed, and it was heavenly.

Which just made Yuuri feel worse, honestly, since he'd basically used Yuri to escape his dilemma. The hour or so they spent talking and the entire night of cuddling were a great relief, to be sure, but Yuri deserved better than to be a simple distraction. 

Well. He wasn't just a distraction. Far from it, ever since he opened up in Moscow, Yuuri kept finding more and more fascinating and endearing depths to Yuri - all the more reason to avoid the appearance of using him.

There were a few minutes before the alarm went off, Yuuri noticed. He carefully reached out to shut it off (Yuri squirmed and grumbled beneath him, but remained asleep) and rolled onto his back (Yuri moved with him in concert, ending up splayed across Yuuri's chest, seemingly content). Turning to look at the other bed, he saw Victor already awake, gazing at the pair of them in obvious amusement.

"You two look so adorable," Victor positively cooed. Yuuri thought he was dead there for a moment. Literally, his heart seemed to stop beating for a solid minute. 

"You...you're not....upset?" Yuuri stammered, caught completely off-guard by how amused Victor seemed to be.

"Why would I be mad?" Victor asked with a laugh as he slipped out of bed for a long, luxurious (read: sexy) stretch. "It makes me happy to see two of my favorite people so comfortable with each other."

Yuuri glanced down at Yuri's beautiful sleeping face in disbelief. It couldn't possibly be this easy, could it? "You...don't think it's weird at all?"

"Of course not!" Victor scoffed, and he leaned over to kiss Yuuri's forehead before he headed for the bathroom. "We should wake him up and get him down to the rink before Yakov comes to find him. If he sees Yurio hanging around with us like this he'll say we're 'corrupting' the poor boy." 

Yuuri laughed at that - or at least he tried to, the sound he made wasn't quite human and was a little more enthusiastic than it perhaps should have been given how mild the joke was - and Victor headed off to the bathroom with a warm smile. Yuuri melted into the bed, positively weak with relief.

"The fuck are you moving so much stupid piggy," Yuri mumbled, and his slight but strong arms were pulled bone-crushingly tight around Yuuri's ribs in an effort to keep him still.

"Because it's morning and Victor is making me get ready for practice?" Yuuri suggested playfully.

That particular revelation hit Yuri's face with the subtlety of an atomic bomb. "Morning? Victor?! Wait so he...so he saw us? He knows? Why aren't we being hauled into a mafia gulag or something?"

"Apparently he thinks we're adorable," Yuuri said, still processing the event himself.

"Shut up," Yuri snapped, an apparently automatic response to the word adorable. "Seriously? He was just...okay with us sleeping together? And being all...that thing you said he said."

"Adorable?"

"Shut up. Don't SAY that."

"Yeah," Yuuri said again, still numb. "Apparently he loves that his favorite people are so close."

Yuri shuddered, apparently at the prospect of being one of Victor's favorite people. "So. Victor Nikiforov, the man who never goes to the same dog sitter twice because he's utterly terrified that his stupid mongrel beast might love them more than him, is totally okay with sharing his boyfriend?"

"I mean. He hasn't called me his boyfriend, exactly - "

"Ugh, fuck off with that already...."

"- but, yeah, he seems to be...excited?"

Yuri grunted. "He's just a sap that enjoys seeing people be all lovey. I doubt he sees me as a threat."

"Well now who's being pessimistic," Yuuri teased. "Maybe he just cares so much about us that he's happy to spread the love?"

"He still doesn't know that we kissed," Yuri pointed out. "A lot. And if he doesn't know that you can't take what he has to say about us too seriously."

Yuuri sighed. Petulant though he was, Yuri seemed to have his shit together. Far more than he did, to be sure. "Can't you just let me live in peaceful denial until the final is over?" 

"I want you to work this out, Katsuki," Yuri growled, an accusing finger jabbing Yuuri in the chest. "If we're gonna be together I don't want this shit looming over it, alright?"

"I understand, and I promise I'll work all of this out as soon as I can, okay?" Yuuri smiled in a way that he hoped was reassuring, reaching out for Yuri's hand and being shocked that Yuri withdrew his hand like he'd been electrocuted.

"No more of that until you work this out," Yuri declared, and he slipped out of bed gracefully and started to search for his clothes. "You already cheated and tricked me into sleeping with you."

"I'm trying," Yuuri groaned. "This whole situation, it's just so unbelievable. I mean, my wildest fantasy about Victor was just meeting him on equal ground, certainly not him having feelings for me. Meeting a fifteen-year-old prodigy that's as beautiful as he is talented and also confusingly interested in me is even more absurd, in so many ways...not that any of this is unwelcome, of course..."

Yuri just sighed at that, and he crossed the room to the door. Pausing at the threshold, he looked incredibly vulnerable for only the second time since Yuuri met him. "Just...do it fast, okay?"

"Yura..."

"Yeah, whatever, bye," Yuri snapped as he rushed through the door without a backward glance.

"I'm sorry," Yuuri said to no one. He could hear Victor singing a Russian song in the shower, the same one he always sang. All he could do is stare at the door to the hall and the door to the ensuite and try to ignore the sick feeling in his chest. To some degree he wondered if the best thing to do would be to just swear off love forever, but the desperation in both of their eyes made the nausea even worse.

How could plain, chubby Yuuri Katsuki inspire those kinds of feelings? Especially in people who made him less than nothing by comparison. The whole thing was almost enough to convince Yuuri that he had some degree of intrinsic value.

...almost.

Yuri avoided the hell out of him throughout practice, which was just as well - every second Yuuri didn't spend concentrating on a jump or choreography was spent planning a conversation with Victor instead. 

"Victor, I love you, but I need to know what, exactly, our relationship is to you" would probably just make him cry again.

"Hey Victor are you my boyfriend" was too casual.

"By the way, dearheart, did you know that I kissed Yurio two weeks ago and really, really want to do it again" was too ridiculous. And would probably also make him cry again.

The best option, as Yurio said, was probably to be as straightforward as possible. Which, ultimately, amounted to "I love you and also I kissed Yurio."

Victor, falling into his chair at the tiny Spanish cafe, seemed to disagree with that being the best way to break the news. "...you did what?!"

"Kissed Yurio?" Yuuri said weakly, forcing the most awkward smile he'd ever made in his life as the entire restaurant turned their direction. "Two weeks ago?"

"On the cheek?" Victor said, clinging to a tiny scrap of hope. "As...as thanks for his help?"

"On the lips," Yuuri said, wincing as the light of hope died in Victor's eyes. "And um. Also with some tongue."

"...why?" Was all an utterly bewildered Victor could answer. He didn't seem angry, at least, if perhaps a little frantic.

"Because he said he loved me?"

"Literally everyone in Russia knows that," Victor said, tilting his head to one side. "Why did you kiss him for that?"

"...because I maybe kind of realized I like him too?"

"Oh god," Victor moaned, and from the look on his face it was immediately clear that he had indeed misinterpreted the Yuri-on-Yuri cuddling. "Yuuri, he's fifteen!"

"Believe me, I know," Yuuri sighed. "It's confusing to me, too."

"So...is that what all the fuss was about when you came home?" Victor said, realization dawning across his face. "Why you were suddenly so unsure about our relationship?"

Yuuri couldn't help but snort at that. "Suddenly? I've been unsure about our relationship since you stood up naked in the hot spring."

"...wait, which time?"

"The first one."

"Oh," Victor said, settling comfortably into his chair again. "Well, that sort of explains a lot."

"Explains a lot about what?" Yuuri asked. Victor seemed to be getting less and less confused, which only served to make Yuuri more and more confused. "Also, why aren't you angry?"

"Oh I have absolutely no idea what I'm feeling right now," Victor said cheerfully. "And it sort of confirms that you were being so cold at first because I waited for so long to contact you."

Well, now he was more confused than ever. "Waited? For what? Since when?"

"After the banquet," Victor said, as if that made any sense at all. "I tried to find you that morning but Celestino was just as hungover as you, apparently, and I couldn't get your room number no matter how hard I flirted with the concierge."

That much sort of made sense. He remembered drinking himself into a depressive stupor and a hungover Celestino playing mama hen, but he distinctly did not remember interacting with Victor at the banquet (personal fears aside, there was a very angry Plisetsky hovering nearby at all times like a personal gargoyle). "So...you wanted to check up on me?"

"At the very least, yes."

"Why?"

Victor just laughed at that. "Because you were so very drunk, and I wanted to make sure you survived the night so I could give you my phone number."

"Why?"

Another laugh. "Because thanks to you that banquet was the greatest night of my life?"

"...why?"

"You sound like a toddler," Victor said, amusement having apparently conquered his misery. "I wish I could explain exactly what it was about you that night that ruined me for other men, but even I don't know. Was it the dancing? I've danced with so many people, Yuuri, but no one like you. Was it how charming you were, how you managed to drag even the most curmudgeonly figure skater in the known universe into your world? Was it the pole dance - "

"WHAT."

" - that was clearly not done at a beginner's skill level, according to Chris, and very nearly ruined a lovely pair of Andrew Christian briefs," Victor finished. "It was all of those things and none of them, really. It was all just you."

"Please explain all of that," Yuuri choked out. "Every noun, verb, and adjective, in detail."

"Oh, Yuuri," Victor sighed. "I understand you can't see how you affect people, but why would you need a play-by-play of something you were there for unless you were blackout drunk?"

"...and?" 

The look of realization that dawned on Victor's face went from amused to terrified in seconds. "Yuuri. Oh my god. Yuuri, you don't - oh god," Victor covered his mouth with his hands. "Oh god. Three months. Three months without a single word and I show up at your house naked. Oh god, who does that? Even Chris at his horniest wouldn't have done that. Yuuri why didn't you throw me out into the street?!"

"Explain," Yuuri croaked. "Please."

Most of the story that followed made Yuuri deeply regret that request, though at least those pole dancing lessons Phichit and Minako had eagerly suggested were put to more use than increasing his core strength. The dance off with Yurio was also something that merited a follow-up. "...and then you were wrapped around me, grinding on me and muttering in Japanese until you asked me, in really bad english, to be your coach."

"I did. That. All of that. Those are things I did," he stammered, and he hated that his traitorous mind agreed with the photos proudly on display. 

"Oh, Yuuri," Victor sighed. "I wish I could explain to you exactly how and why I fucked this all up so very spectacularly."

Still slightly numb from the new information, Yuuri managed to make his lips move enough to offer reassurance. "You haven't fucked anything up...I'm the one that kinda sorta cheated."

"No," Victor said, and his amusement had faded into something darker. "Yuuri, I was completely detached from the world until I met you. I was just...existing. Gliding from competition to competition and practice to practice, a shell being tossed around by he wind. I was utterly indifferent to life. I didn't want to die or anything, but the idea of death was not only not frightening but almost a relief. It would be something new. An end to the monotony and misery.

"I wish I could explain what, exactly, about you brought me back. I think the answer to that question can only be 'literally everything,' but it doesn't matter because the truth is that you anchor me to reality and make me want to live in it at the same time. I was brought back to life over the course of one evening, and I learned how to love for the first time over the course of just a few months with you," Victor finished. His eyes were shining. "So it's not your fault. I could have made this clear from the start, especially after China. But I was so utterly petrified of being unanchored and left to drift back into that abyss that the idea of exposing myself to that possibility caused me actual physical pain." 

"That...that couldn't have been easy to say," Yuuri said, even as Victor became blurry through hot tears.

A hand suddenly came to rest atop his. "You'd be surprised what you're capable of once it becomes very possible you're about to lose something that gives your life meaning, and you have no one but yourself to blame."

"Victor, I...I couldn't possibly...I love you," Yuuri sobbed. "I can't believe anything you're saying but I also know you mean it and it's maddening but I love you."

"I understand," Victor took a very long, very deep breath. "I love you, too, Yuuri."

Yuuri, attempting in vain to process that statement, collapsed into a weeping mess on the table. Victor idly stroked his hair until the tears slowed, chatting calmly about Makkachin's recovery and how lovely the Barcelona weather was, sounding entirely too calm for someone who had just confessed his love to someone that blatantly cheated on him. "You should hate me," Yuuri finally managed to say. "Why don't you hate me?"

"Yuuri, I could never," he said oh-so-simply. "I am wholly responsible for this getting so complicated."

"Not wholly responsible," Yuuri said with a soft smile. "I should have known what was going on, or at least asked you to clear things up."

"I know that's not easy for you to do, love, it's fine."

"And this wasn't east for you to do," Yuuri countered. "But here you are surprising me again."

Victor chuckled at that and grabbed Yuuri's hand where it lay on the table. "If you insist on claiming responsibility for some of this mess, I reluctantly allow it. However I insist that it is almost entirely my fault."

"On that we agree," Yuuri said as he found a genuine smile crossing his face. "If nothing else I could have cleared this up weeks ago. Yurio has been pushing me to talk to you about this since we got back to Hasetsu."

"He has?" Victor said, clearly stunned. "Even though he told you how he felt?"

"Yeah," Yuuri said. "Honestly, he's spent far more time trying to get me to work things out with you than trying to get into my pants or anything."

Victor winced. "He's so young, Yuuri."

"I know," Yuuri said again. "I don't want to go that far with him to be sure, but...ugh, this is such a mess. I do have feelings for him. I'm sorry. I have no idea what to do."

"Though, as much of a brat as he is, he sure is being mature about this..."

"I mean, he's young," Yuuri continued, showing no sign of having heard Victor's interjection. "Every relationship seems like it's the most important thing in the world at his age. He'll have time to get over it if I cut things off, right?"

Victor couldn't help but smirk at that. "How would you know, Mister 'Never Had a Lover Before?'"

"I don't have much experience myself," Yuuri muttered, still oblivious to Victor's continued presence. "I mean, I was forced into a few dates here and there, almost none of them got a second date and absolutely no thirds. And Phichit...well he was a Phichit."

"Oh, I knew you two fooled around," Victor crowed. "You are telling me every lurid detail later."

"I definitely love Phichit but it's completely different. In fact I probably have him to thank for me realizing not every successful relationship involves true love," Yuuri mused. "But no, I never believed I was in love with anyone. Except you. The idea of you, anyway. So, yes, he is inexperienced, but that doesn't inherently devalue his feelings for you. It may not be love, but it could be quite real."

"Goodness," Victor cooed. "Are you sure you have no idea what to do? Sounds to me like you have some thoughts on that."

Yuuri felt relief blossom in his chest, the sensation warm and pleasant yet overwhelming. "I think I may, in fact, have an idea."


	5. Resolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuri decides to act his age, and Yuuri finally gets a chance to come through for him.

"I watched that boy you talked about skate today, Yuratchka," Nikolai Plisetsky said as the two of them sat in his car outside of the stadium. There was an unmistakable air of mischief about the old man tonight, and it deeply, deeply frightened Yuri. "The Japanese boy with your name, yes?"

"...why?" Yuri asked, fearful, as he backed up against the door. He was sure he'd said nothing incriminating the day before, only really mentioning Yuuri in the context of their rivalry, but...

Nikolai's face slowly split into a familiar, warm, well-worm smile. "Yuratchka, did you think I would not be able to tell right away when my grandson told me about his first love?"

Instinctively, Yuri bristled at the accusation - but he'd had his first kiss with Yuuri the night before, and he wasn't about to throw a fit in front of his grandpa, either. "What gave me away?" He asked instead as he slumped, defeated, into the cheap faux-leather chair.

"Not once in fifteen years have I heard you speak so highly of one of your peers, first of all," Nikolai said matter of factly as he took a thoughtful pull on his pipe. "Second, I have never heard you speak so much about a single person, ever. You brought him up ten times in a five-minute conversation."

"Oh," was all Yuri could say to that.

"Last, but certainly not least," Nikolai declared with a dramatic exhale of scented smoke, "The Russian broadcast kept its cameras on you for the first half of the other Yuri's performance, and the way you looked at him...even if you'd never mentioned him, I would have known then."

Yuri groaned; a lengthy, terrible moan of pure angst. "Grandpa can we talk about literally anything else, please?"

"Not until you spill all of the beans," Nikolai said with a sternness that belied his obvious amusement. "I have dreamed of the day I could grill you about your first love for many years now."

"I mean. I told you all about Japan already," Yuri said, trying to make it seem as though that was all there was to it.

Nikolai was having none of that, the clever old bastard. "But you have been in Moscow for two days now, are you telling me you haven't seen him even one time?"

"...I did see him a couple of times yes."

"The beans, Yura," Nikolai commanded. "Spill them."

Yuri would kill the person that decided to teach his grandpa that particular idiom. "Fine. Okay. The night we arrived I caught him in an elevator - "

"Oh, I could tell you so many stories about your grandmother and I in elevators..."

" - and I kind of yelled at him. Also, please never do that," Yuri finished with a shudder.

"What did he do to make you yell? Do I need to call the bratva?"

"Grandpa I'm fifteen, I haven't believed you have mafia contacts for like three years," Yuri muttered, and he groaned again when the old man tapped his nose surreptitiously. "Anyway. I was just trying to intimidate him I guess. But ever since the second time we met he hasn't ever been afraid of me."

That seemed to amuse the old man, who answered with a hearty guffaw. "I like this boy already. He has your number."

"I mean, he seemed to pick up very quickly that I didn't hate him, but he never figured out anything deeper than that," Yuri said with a frustrated sigh. "Not until I told him point blank."

"Yuratchka!" Nikolai gasped. "You talked to him already?"

"It was sort of on accident but yes?"

"My boy, that is one of the hardest lessons of love to learn, and you figured it out by yourself," Nikolai said, swelling a little with pride. "It does no good to bottle up love and hide it for fear of not being loved in return. At the very least you have to try. So how did it go?"

"I blame grandma for this whole conversation. She obviously dragged you to a few knitting circles and you developed an insatiable thirst for gossip," Yuri growled to his grandpa's amusement. "He...he likes me too. But it's um. Complicated?"

"That is an unpleasant word," Nikolai said grimly. "How is it complicated?"

"Well we sort of had this talk while his sort of boyfriend was out of the country for sort of emergency?"

Now it was Nikolai's turn to groan, which gave Yuri a small amount of vicious satisfaction. "Yuri Plisetsky. What do you mean 'sort of boyfriend?'"

"As in he's a thickheaded idiot that also loves Yuuri but never said anything...and because he never said anything, Yuuri never said that he loves the idiot back."

Nikolai sat in silence for a moment, processing this information with a grim look on his face. He reached over to pat Yuri's head gently. "Well, then, his loss. You two had the talk the two of them did not, so you two should be the ones to have this chance."

"I don't know...they've had all these months together. Me, I just yelled at him a lot and then got him to stop crying like...one time."

"This seems a little complicated for your first love," Nikolai said, tapping his pipe thoughtfully. "I am still proud of you for talking things out like a grownup but I think you should perhaps look for something else."

"But I love him," Yuri snapped, and it was the first time he'd even slightly raised his voice at his grandpa in years. "I can't just give up on that, can I?"

"You are still young, Yuratchka, and at your age every love will feel like your last," Nikolai answered, and Yuri would have let out an earth-shattering shriek of sheer frustration had his grandpa not continued speaking. "Not to diminish your feelings, of course. What I mean is that sometimes, when pursuing your love hurts more than losing them, you should let them go. If only for a moment."

The very idea of never spending another night in Yuuri's arms left Yuri feeling ice cold to the point of numbness. "That won't be easy."

"It will not," Nikolai confirmed. "But it will become easier. If you spend your days pushing and pushing and trying to convince this boy you are what's best for him, then he may grow to resent you for it. Say your piece, then let him think. Don't abandon him, of course, but don't push."

"That sounds REALLY hard," Yuri said weakly. 

"It is," Nikolai sighed. "But if he comes back to you after all that, you will be stronger for it. If not, then you did all you could, and you know that you helped him find happiness."

Happiness. Yes, the thought of making Yuuri smile was good in any context. Yuri could stare at that smile for days, frame it and put it up on his wall as a night light because when Yuuri Katsuki smiled, everything around him lit up like the stars.

"I was once in love with the most beautiful woman in all of Russia. I proposed to her after almost two years together and she turned me down. I took it well enough at first, but it became more and more clear to me that she was torn between her love for me and her love for independence. I ended things then, told her I loved her, and that if she ever wanted something more...permanent, I would always have a place in my heart for her. It was devastating for both of us, but so was staying together when we were both so torn."

"And that was grandma, obviously," Yuri mumbled.

"No, and to be honest, I have no memory whatsoever of her name or face," Nikolai said cheerily. "I met your grandmother six months later. If I had stayed with the other woman, even though she may have never wanted the family I wanted, I would have never met her, and you would have never been born."

Well, so much for the cliches. "What happened to her?"

"I let her know that I met someone as soon as it became clear that I would be seeing your grandmother for a while. She was upset at first, of course, but she understood quickly enough that she was happy with the way things were. She came to the wedding, seduced one of my groomsmen, and went her own way after that. Haven't heard from her since your mother was born."

"So I already told him how I feel," Yuri said, picking at his jacket while he thought hings through. "Does that mean that I just leave him to think things through now?"

Nikolai shrugged. "I said try your best, didn't I? You won't see him for a few more weeks. Make tonight special. But not too special."

"Grandpa, no."

"I just wanted to make sure!" Nikolai chortled, raising his hands in self-defense. "I would say don't do anything I wouldn't do, but, well, at your age I - "

"GRANDPA, NO."

"Okay, okay!" Nikolai pulled Yuri into a crushing hug. After he released Yuri to tend to his bruised ribs, he tossed a warm paper bag into Yuri's lap. "Here. This is the boy that loves the pork cutlets, yes? Share my masterpiece with him. A good memory before you both have to go your separate ways."

Yuri's heart felt full to bursting. "Grandpa...what if it's too hard? I don't know if I can let him go."

"If you love him," Nikolai said thoughtfully, a hand firmly clasping Yuri's frail shoulder, "Then you can do anything for him. And I will always be here if it gets too hard."

"Grandpa..." Yuri said, somewhat emotional.

"If I die before then I will send you my ashes instead."

"Grandpa." Yuri said, mildly irritated.

"I'll have your mother engrave the urn with an image of me giving you a nice, reassuring thumbs-up."

"GRANDPA." Yuri said, deeply exasperated. "I love you, old man. No dying before I figure this out. I don't want your face smiling down at me from an urn all creepy-like."

"I'm writing that clause into my will as soon as I get home," Nikolai said with an air of deadly seriousness. "I love you too, Yuratchka. You can do this."

* * *

Yuri's second night in Barcelona made the first one look like a cakewalk. JJ was still an asshole. His fans were still insatiable, though he at least managed to make a friend after a timely rescue. And he still had a text from Yuuri on his phone. Several, in fact, all unread.

No, what made this night so unforgivably bad were the two glowing golden lights forever seared into his retinas by those idiots and their stupid fucking rings.

Keeping up a front was Yuri's specialty, or so he liked to think. He could pout, sulk, scream, or poker face his way through anything. But when Chris and that stupid chipper Thai skater made a big display of them, he thought he might have legitimately died from choking on his own rage and despair. 

At first, he thought he might have survived the ordeal. Yuuri, clearly exasperated, made eye contact and offered a reassuring smile (and, god help him, a wink). Yuri was still fucking pissed, but he was sufficiently mollified to allow Yuuri the chance to explain.

Once the fuss died down, Victor had to ruin everything by explaining they weren't wedding rings, but a "promise." Of a gold medal and...something else. Something he refused to elaborate on and winked ever-so-salaciously about. The gold medal part was infuriating. The "something else" was typical Victor.

What absolutely murdered him was how fucking guilty Yuuri looked after that statement. So Yuri, as he did when hiding or yelling weren't an option, ran back to his hotel and locked the door.

Yuuri texted him. Otabek texted him. Yuuri texted him again, and again, and again. Someone knocked on his door for fifteen minutes. Otabek texted again. Then Yuuri texted one last time and his phone was still. Not one message had been read. 

Yuri knew he was being petulant, but he decided that for once he was going to act his age. So Yuuri made his choice then. Whatever. He didn't need to hear an explanation. It would just be a distraction. 

A warning would have been nice, though. But it was far too late for that, and the only cold comfort he had was that Yuuri seemed happy.

If he's happy, I'm happy, Yuri thought, over and over, until he fell asleep.

If he's happy, I'm happy, Yuri thought as he skated away from Yuuri and Victor during practice.

If he's happy, I'm happy, Yuri thought as he tried and failed to enjoy Yuuri messing up Eros.

"If he's happy, I'm happy," Yuri said to no one in particular as he made his way into Agape's opening stance, and the music flowed through him in a way it never had before.

If he's happy, I can eventually be happy, Yuri thought after the glow of his new world record faded, and it might have even been true.

If he's happy, I will be happy, Yuri thought one last time as someone started pounding on his door.

If he's happy, I - oh fuck, Yuri thought as he opened the door to find not Yakov, but an oddly serene-looking Yuuri.

"Hi?" Yuuri said with a meek smile.

Yuri managed to resist the compulsion to slam the door. "Hi."

"Can I come in?"

"Why."

"I don't want to talk about personal stuff in the hallway," Yuuri whispered, fidgeting and clearly uncomfortable. Good.

Yuri shrugged and headed back to his bed. "Fine."

"Thanks," Yuuri said, and he awkwardly shuffled in through the door. Yuri flopped onto the bed, taking up as much real estate as possible so Yuuri was forced to sit in a chair. "So...I guess you're upset about the rings, right?"

"Nope," Yuri said, and it was true enough. Still, he'd had his fill of being petulant over the last twenty-four hours. "I was upset that you didn't give me any kind of warning."

"It happened literally minutes before we crashed your dinner with Otabek," Yuuri said sheepishly. "I just wish I'd had the chance to set you aside and talk about it before Chris and Phichit got so worked up over nothing?"

"Fancy-ass gold rings from Spain aren't nothing," Yuri pointed out. "And you sure seemed guilty after Victor mentioned this 'promise' or whatever."

"Because I realized how awful it was going to look and felt like an ass for not talking to you more quickly," Yuuri sighed. "You know how dramatic he can be."

"About as dramatic as that understatement."

"Fair enough. But Yuri, listen, the rings...yes, they were expensive, and okay, maybe they are a big deal. But not in the way Chris or Phichit or, apparently, you think."

"Enlighten me," Yuri said with forced disinterest. 

"Well first they were good luck charms," Yuuri began, and he continued despite Yuri's disbelieving snort. "But it was also a promise, yes. Gold for gold, for one thing. The other was just a way of binding us together, no matter what. Coach and student, boyfriends or lovers or whatever, friends."

"Still sounds romantic," Yuri said through clenched teeth.

"For now, sure," Yuuri said. He seemed so confident tonight. It was weird and also arousing. "Listen, Yuri, I did work everything out with him, but it was only because of you that we did."

"Hooray."

"But that doesn't mean that I don't still have feelings for you."

"Ugh, don't jerk me around, Katsuki," Yuri groaned. "If you're gonna be with him then go be with him and leave me alone."

"I can't and I won't," Yuuri said, smiling. "Yuri. I'm so honored to be your first. And I think...I think I would like to be your last."

Yuri's heart just about exploded at that.

"But I can't be your only. It's not fair to you, being so young and missing out on years of seeing new people. And it's not fair to me," Yuuri continued, correctly anticipating that Yuri was about to object to being told what was or wasn't fair to him. "Because that is way, way too much pressure, having all three of those titles."

"Still sounds like I'm being dumped," Yuri said, curling up onto his side. Yuuri took that as a non-verbal invitation to sit on the bed, still giving Yuri his own space.

"Not at all," Yuuri chided. "I...I still have feelings for you. Strong ones. Whatever my concerned about how old you are, you proved how mature you were by forcing Victor and I to work through things it could have taken months or years to deal with on our own. You're so young, and yet you keep protecting me, over and over. From Victor, from the world, from myself. I can't just deny how important you are to me. How at peace I am holding you or how good it feels kissing you."

"Is sex is still out of the question?" Yuri asked, turning back to cast a wary eye over Yuuri. "Because I really, really want you to fuck the life out of me."

The panicked look on Yuuri's face was so, so sweet. "I. Uh. Wow. Okay. I think...sorry. You're still so...but I would...you are very, uh - "

"Jesus, katsudon, try not to have an aneurysm. I was joking...sort of."

Yuuri let out a long sigh. "You're terrible."

"I'm fifteen, I'm allowed to be horny every hour of every day," Yuri said. He rolled over to his other side to look at Yuuri. "So what did all those pretty words you spouted actually mean?"

Yuuri opened up his arms, inviting Yuri to come settle into them, which he readily accepted. "I mean that I am going to explore this relationship with Victor - which you helped to fix - for as long as it goes. Or at least until you're ready to be with me, you know, in earnest."

"'Explore?' Really?"

"Shut up," Yuuri chuckled. "I couldn't think of anything better."

"So why are you teasing me with all this physical affection if you're gonna be with Victor for...a while?" Yuri asked, though he made no effort to move away.

"Well, I also wanted to suggest that if you think you can handle it, I...don't really want things between us to change, in the meantime."

"...explain."

"I like this. Being with you. I just...if you're not seeing anyone that wants to see you exclusively, you know, we can still be just as intimate and," Yuuri smiled wickedly, "adorable as ever."

Yuri groaned. "Why'd you have to ruin it? I hate you."

"No you don't. Anyway, do you think that's something you can deal with?"

"Won't know until we try," Yuri said, though he has never been more certain of anything in his life. "Victor's alright with that, I guess? Not that I care."

"Yeah, you do," Yuuri teased. "And he is. He respects that it's difficult for me. And he knows that things between us aren't going to go any farther than this until you and I can date properly. So he is perfectly willing to allow us to be ador-"

Yuri leapt forward and kissed him before he could finish that sinful word. "Never say that again and I agree to your terms."

Yuuri raised a hand to Yuri's face and stroked his cheek, keeping their foreheads pressed together. "It's worth it, for you," he said softly. "You've surprised me again. I mean, I'd hoped you would be okay with this idea, because you tried so hard to get Victor and I to work through everything, but...I know how hard to was for me to wait for anything at your age, I can't even imagine having to wait for something like this."

"It's just another competition," Yuri smirked, pressing their faces closer. "I'm gonna date you way better than Victor."

"Good luck," Yuuri breathed. They were so, so close.

"I'm gonna blow that old fuck out of the water. Maybe he'll be bald by then. I'll totally have him beat."

"Maybe I have a thing for baldness."

"The way you love playing with my hair?" Yuri scoffed, leaning in closer to Yuuri's sweet lips. "I really fucking doubt that."

Yuuri raised his other hand right on cue to run his fingers through Yuri's soft, golden hair, and Yuri moaned softly at the sensation. "Fair enough," Yuuri sighed.

"In the meantime," Yuri added, "I'm gonna fuck more people than you two combined."

"That's like...two people for me."

"Yeah but Victor's ancient so he probably has a lot," Yuri said. "Also, mine are gonna be way hotter than any of yours. So there."

"I don't know...you haven't seen Phichit in short shorts yet."

Yuri smiled. Honest to god smiled for the first time since Moscow. "I'll send you pictures of each and every one. We can compare notes, and I get to make you jealous."

"How cruel."

"I bet you're an amazing kisser when you're jealous," Yuri hissed, and their lips were grazing each other as they spoke. 

"What, like I'm not always?"

"Hmmm...if you are, you've probably ruined me for other men."

"Good," Yuuri sighed, and he pulled Yuri in by the back of his head and forced their lips to meet. It had been barely more than a day since they last kissed but to Yuri it felt like centuries - probably because he never expected to get another one. But to get another one, such a passionate one, deep and hot and desperate and made all the better by the extended foreplay they'd shared, was sheer bliss.

Yuuri would be his. And until then, he could have as many of these perfect kisses as he wanted. It was more than he'd ever had any right to hope for.


End file.
